


Our Hearts, They Pulse Like Waves

by YaelaTheWordsmith



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: (T rating is for implied sex but it's very definitely not explicit in any way whatsoever), (almost forgot that tag whoops there's a lot of hurt and a lot of comfort lemme tell you), (also there's a Real Bad Argument in the middle just putting it out there), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Happy ending though, M/M, Selkie AU, Tragic Romance, and they all love each other to death, and they fall in love very softly, daichi is best boy as always, grandpa ukai is best grumpy old man, if i can convince you that asaiwa actually have a great dynamic then my work is complete kdsjfk, iwa and asahi are blacksmiths, keishin is best big brother, ryuu hitoka and yams are darlings, selkie! asahi, the intention of this fic is to get people to join me on this lonely ship, waaah this story has been so long in the making i'm excite!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:07:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 45,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23562808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YaelaTheWordsmith/pseuds/YaelaTheWordsmith
Summary: Hajime is fourteen when the long-haired boy wanders into the village, lost and terrified. He can't answer anything about his family, his home, his life, so Hajime shrugs and tells him where he can find a bed and food and tells him that the smithy is taking on apprentices. The boy takes his advice, and Hajime finds himself growing up in the smithy with Asahi right next to him through the years. They fall in love as easily and naturally as the seasons turn, as the leaves fall, as birds fly and as waves kiss the shore. But then Hajime hears of a selkie's coat in the village, and suddenly needs to face what he's always kind of known - that Asahi isn't quite human.This is a story about their love, about what Hajime's decision does to them both, and how he struggles in the aftermath.
Relationships: Azumane Asahi/Iwaizumi Hajime, Sawamura Daichi/Tanaka Ryuunosuke
Comments: 27
Kudos: 26
Collections: HQ Rarepair Bang 2020





	1. lost, barefoot, bleeding

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhhhh finally!! It's the AsaIwa!!!!!!! I'm so excited for this story, I loved writing it so so much (what can I say, I'm a dramatic person) and I hope people enjoy reading it just as much :))) Many thanks to Amber for doing a great job betaing and being very supportive ^.^ Here's her [insta](https://www.instagram.com/haikyuu_traaash/) and here's her [wattpad](https://wattpad.com/haikyuu_traaash)  
> (Art is for a scene in the last chapter, so it will be linked in the notes then!)

“Shoo,” Hajime says, nudging a chicken aside with his foot. “The feed’s over there, go on.”

The chicken bumps into one of her fellows, and is instantly pulled into the mad scramble for the grain Hajime’s scattered. He snorts, watching her try to flap her way to the front, and bends to pick up the egg she left behind. His basket is almost full, a comfortable weight on his arm. They’ll be having eggs with every meal for a week, and his mother will have enough to sell to bring in some extra money. 

_Nice of the hens to be so generous_ , he thinks absently as he goes to fetch another egg lying near the wooden fence enclosing their yard. It hadn’t been a kind winter - there’s still a cruel nip in the air, this late in the year - and this will go a fair way to keeping them warm until it’s proper summer.

There’s a rustle as he crouches to pick up the egg. His head snaps up, and he sweeps his gaze across the woods beyond the fence, instantly alert. They’d lost a quarter of their chickens to a fox two years ago, and can’t possibly afford to do so again. He catches sight of a flash of colour, a dull brown-red in the grass by a tree, and clicks his tongue in irritation.

“Hey!” he yells, groping for a stone with his free hand. “Get out, you’re not gettin’ any of them this time!”

Brown eyes peer fearfully around the tree trunk - but about four feet higher than he expected, and he drops the stone in surprise.

_It’s a boy?_

The eyes vanish, and there’s the sound of rustling footsteps receding fast, like the boy is hurrying to leave.

“Wait -” Hajime sets the basket aside and scrambles over the fence. “Hey, sorry about that!”

He knows these woods like the back of his hand, and the boy isn’t half as fast as Hajime is - he’s either very slow, or injured, or has little energy to spare. It’s not hard to catch up. When the boy realises how close Hajime is, he stumbles sideways to cower back against the nearest tree, face downcast and breath uneven. His dull red yukata is ragged and dirty and too small for his large frame. His hair is an unusual colour, a dark chestnut brown, tangled and messy. He’s scratched everywhere, and a couple of wounds are deep enough that they’re bleeding sluggishly. His eyes and nose are red, his cheeks tear-streaked.

“Uh, sorry,” Hajime says uncertainly, looking him up and down. “I thought you were a fox, and we have chickens, that’s why I yelled . . . I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The boy says nothing, staring at his feet like a dog waiting to be beaten.

“Are you from around here?” Hajime asks, propping a hand on his hip and trying to sound bracing. “I’ve never seen you before.”

The boy shakes his head once.

“I figured. You lost?”

A nod this time, slow and hesitant.

“Looks like you fell or something, too, you look pretty beat up. It ain’t like you’re the first to show up though, with the war that’s going on . . . What’s your name?”

“It’s - it’s A-Asahi.” His voice is almost too soft to hear.

“What’s your family name?”

The look the boy gives him is one of terrified incomprehension. Hajime frowns a little, wondering if he’s been abandoned by his family, or just doesn’t remember who they are.

“Okay, forget it. You want to come in and have some tea or something? You look hungry.”

Asahi’s mouth parts a little, want and fear warring clearly in his eyes. Pity stirs in Hajime’s chest, and he tries to sound a little gentler, holding out an inviting hand.

“Don’t be scared. The war’s hurt everybody, and my Ma says it’s our duty to help however we can. We can afford to give you a meal. And if you need help looking for your people, we can maybe help with that too. Come on.”

Asahi looks between Hajime’s face and his hand for a long, long moment, and then slowly places his own palm in Hajime’s. His hand is warm and rough, his fingers trembling slightly.

Hajime grins at him, and leads him back to the yard. He helps him over the fence and picks up the basket of eggs, setting it on his hip as they enter the house.

“Ma!” he yells, cupping a hand to his mouth. “Hey, Ma! You busy?”

“What do you think, Hajime?” She sticks her head out of the kitchen, scowling. Strands of hair are stuck to her sweaty forehead. “I have to get ready for the evening crowd - we’re a couple barrels short of liquor and the bastard merchant who sold them to me is probably laughing his ass off right now, I need to get food ready and then go and wring his neck. You better have a good reason for -”

She catches sight of Asahi shrinking behind Hajime, and sighs without much surprise. “Picked up a stray?”

Hajime shrugs. “He’s hungry, Ma. Lost in the woods.”

“Probably the damn war, huh, kid?” she says, sharp eyes softening for a moment. “You can get him something from the storeroom, but I can’t house him. You know that.”

Haime scowls, looking away. “I know.”

“You take him to Crow House. Ukai has more than enough money to house one more waif, the gods know.”

“You don’t need me here for the evening?”

“Ryuu-kun’s coming in to help, I’ll be fine,” she says, coming to take the basket from him. “Make sure he gets a bath and some new clothes, you hear me?”

“What do you want _me_ to do, stitch him something fancy?” Hajime says indignantly, but she’s already gone back inside. Grumbling to himself, he sends Asahi to wash off in the barrel of water outside while he grabs a decent meal and sets it out on the tiny low table he and his mother use.

“All yours,” he says, sitting down and propping his chin in one hand.

“Thank you,” Asahi says in a voice that’s barely above a whisper, kneeling across from him and gingerly picking up the chopsticks. He still has a few drops of water on his face, and he hasn’t done a very good job of getting the grime off, but his hands are perfectly clean. “You - you will not eat?”

 _You’re asking me, when you’re half dead from hunger?_ Hajime thinks, and he can’t help smiling a little. “We eat early, before evening customers come in,” he says. “So I’m done for the day. Thanks, though.”

He doesn’t know if it’s lingering trauma from whatever left him wandering in the woods, or that he just happens to be a nervous person and doesn’t like Hajime watching him while he eats, but Asahi fumbles terribly with the chopsticks and says almost nothing as he eats. When Hajime asks about his family, his home, or how he got lost, all he gets in return is a silent shake of the head. Hajime gives up soon enough, figuring it isn’t really his place to pry, and lets him eat in silence; though he has to muffle a laugh when Asahi gives up and stabs a shrimp with his chopsticks after dropping it thrice.

He starts to clear the dishes away as soon as Asahi is done, saying “We’ll go to Crow House now, you can stay there until you find your parents. Give me a second to put these away and I’ll be right out.”

“Ah -” Asahi reaches out with an uncertain hand. “Um -”

“Yeah?”

“Y-your name is Hajime?”

Hajime blinks, then grins. “Damn, I never introduced myself, did I? I’m Iwaizumi Hajime.”

Asahis mouth opens, closes, opens again in uncertainty. “So - so I call you -?” Hajime tilts his head, wondering just exactly where this kid came from. _Did he grow up in the forest or something?_ “Hajime is fine, I guess, since I’m calling you by your first name.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he echoes. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

Asahi follows him to the kitchen as he puts the dishes away though, and through the whole house and the space for patrons in front, and then trails behind him as they begin to walk south.

“You see those hills?” Hajime says over his shoulder, pointing down the path to where three tiny hills lie together, darkening as the sun sets. “Over those is the sea. Crow House is built into the side of the middle one.”

“What is Crow House?”

“There’s this old guy called Ukai, he’s rich as hell. He used to be chief of the village. He built a huge house, but no one lived there except him and his grandson, so when the first border war happened he started taking in all the people who had nowhere else to go and letting them stay there for as long as they like. It’s been twenty years since then, and he never stopped. Most people leave once they have food in their bellies and clothes on their backs, but a few live there with him.”

“Um, do I need to - to pay him?”

Hajime stops, and Asahi cringes when he looks at him. “You got any money?”

“N-no . . . ”

Hajime shrugs, and waits for Asahi to reach his side this time before walking again. “Not a problem. It’s customary to give him what you can for what he does, but he ain’t one to demand anything. He’s the one choosing to open his doors to you, it ain’t generosity if there’s a price. But he told me once, you know, that this village doesn’t have beggars and never will.” He can’t help puffing out his chest a little. “My Ma, she gave you a hot meal because she’s good like that and she’d never expect money either, but here we pay our debts and earn what we eat. You hear? So if you’re going to stay, you better find something you can turn your hand to.”

Asahi says nothing. It’s only when Hajime looks at him that he realises that his lip is trembling, and tears are starting to spill down his cheeks.

“Hey,” he says, uncomfortably. “Damn, I didn’t mean to - come on, don’t cry -”

Asahi sniffles, wiping his nose on his sleeve, and Hajime pats his shoulder gingerly. “Listen, I, uh, didn’t mean to scare you. Um - there’s actually - the blacksmith is taking on apprentices, I’m reporting to her tomorrow morning. I’m sure she could take you too, if you asked politely.”

He’s honestly not sure how persuasive Asahi can be, given his evident timidity, but Saeko-san has a good heart under the bluster, and he’s fairly certain she won’t refuse to take him, especially since he seems to be growing into a fairly big body.

“Thank you,” Asahi says, voice wavering, scrubbing at his face with one palm. “A-and thank you for taking me to the - the Crow House, and for the food, and -”

“Okay, okay, yes, don’t mention it,” Hajime says gruffly, embarrassed. “Let’s walk a bit faster, I want to make it before nightfall.”

It’s another good quarter of an hour before they reach the bottom of the hill, and another ten minutes before they climb up to the house itself. Asahi is panting more than Hajime thinks he maybe should be, but he takes a moment even in his exhaustion to gape at the palatial building. It’s raised off the ground on short stone pillars, its grounds overflowing with trees and shrubs that will flower beautifully in the season. The entrance is hidden by a massive red curtain with Ukai’s family crest stitched into the middle in black, flanked by two large wooden posts that support an arch that mimics the roof. The roof itself is gently curved and richly ornamented, gleaming red even in the faint light. A lovely, massive veranda wraps around the whole thing, and it extends far enough that there must be five rooms on either side that open onto it. The house has two stories, and through every window they can see the warm glow of lanterns.

“It’s huge,” Asahi says, hushed and awed. Hajime gives him a grin before knocking on one of the posts, calling “It’s Iwaizumi! Can we enter?”

There’s the low rumble of Ukai-jiisan’s voice, and then the padding of footsteps. The curtain is pulled half aside, and Daichi grins at Hajime, dimple dancing in one cheek. “Your mom chase you out?”

“Shut up,” Hajime says, but his mouth twitches up anyway. “Brought you a stray.”

“Oh?” Daichi peers around Hajime to look at Asahi, and his eyes go warm and kind. “Come right in.”

Hajime comes over to Crow House often to drag Daichi with him down to the beach or into the flower fields to play, but the admiration he feels for this place never fades. He and Asahi follow Daichi down the polished corridors and past an open screen door to where Ukai-jiisan, his grandson, and Yacchan are sitting, evidently just finishing their evening meal. She smiles at him shyly, and he smiles back before turning to Ukai-jiisan.

“Good evening,” Hajime says, bowing, and Asahi hastily bows with him. “We’re sorry to interrupt your meal.”

“We’re used to it by now, brat,” the old man says, sniffing disparagingly. “Why have you come? No sense of duty to your mother?”

Keishin-nii snorts, and Yacchan giggles into her bowl. Hajime scowls briefly at them both.

“She sent me, sir,” he says, and gestures at Asahi. “He was lost in the woods behind the house. She said to bring him here.”

Ukai’s piercing eyes settle on Asahi, who takes a step back. 

“Come here, child,” he says, more gently. Asahi looks at Hajime nervously. Hajime nods in encouragement, and Asahi goes to kneel by Ukai-jiisan, wincing out of reflex when he turns his arms so his forearms face upwards. A respectful silence falls over the room as Ukai-jiisan works his way upwards, gently prodding his muscle and skimming over his skin and probably noting every single scratch, if Hajime knows him at all.

“Not pretty,” Ukai-jiisan murmurs, almost to himself as he runs a finger over a patch of dried blood from a scratch on Asahi’s neck. “You want to stay with us, boy?”

Hajime thinks Asahi will bolt for a split second, with Ukai-jiisan’s keen gaze on him and his long fingers firm on his wrist as the question hangs heavy in the air, and he honestly wouldn’t blame him. But then Asahi whispers, “Yes, sir,” and Ukai-jiisan smiles slightly, and Hajime breathes a sigh of relief. “Right, then. Keishin, you arrange for his room - he can have Ryuu’s. Have you eaten?”

“Yes, sir.”

“There’s no need for ‘sir’, ojiisan is fine. Hitoka -” Yacchan looks up quickly. “- you take him outside, show him where he can bathe, and tell him the rules of this house.”

Daichi speaks up, his eyes on the nervous twisting of Yacchan’s fingers. “Ojiisan, I can -”

“You can find him something decent to wear, and lay it out for him. Stay close by the spring, so he can call for you if he needs you. Your name, boy?”

“Asahi, sir - um, o-ojiisan.”

“Asahi, this is Sawamura Daichi, that’s Yachi Hitoka, and this is my grandson, Ukai Keishin. They will tell you how they wish you to address them. Go bathe - those wounds of yours should be washed out properly, with hot water - wear something warm, and get a night’s rest. You certainly look like you need it.” He squeezes Asahi’s hands lightly before allowing them to drop, and places a brief hand on his head. “Welcome to Crow House.”

He nods to Yacchan, who is standing to the side with downcast eyes. Asahi trips over his feet hurrying to her, and casts a last apprehensive look in Hajime’s direction before following her out.

“Hope he knows how to bathe,” Hajime mutters, and Daichi gives him a frowning look.

“He’s not that dirty, don’t be rude.”

“Not that, it’s -” Ukai-jiisan’s gaze is on him, he realises, and he shuffles his feet awkwardly. “He had trouble with chopsticks. And he didn’t know how to address me. I don’t know, he’s odd.”

“War children have troubles you don’t know of,” Keishin-nii says, gathering up the dishes and placing them on a tray. “I assume that is what he is?”

Hajime shrugs. “He won’t say, but I think so. He was lost, at any rate, and if his parents are still alive he doesn’t seem to have a clue where to find them.”

“Don’t ask him anything, either of you,” Ukai-jiisan says, stern once more. “Let him grow comfortable here, and he will speak in his own time, or he will not. It is his choice. You hear me, boys?”

“Yes, ojiisan,” they mutter.

“Go get him some clothes then, Daichi.” Daichi sighs and gives Hajime a pat on the shoulder before leaving to do as he’s been told. “And you, Iwaizumi, be off home. It’s getting late.”

“Ojiisan, I wanted to ask - I told Asahi that Saeko-san would likely take him on as an apprentice too, if he wanted it, but I’m not really sure if she’ll do it. I mean -”

“What, a big boy like him? She’ll only be too pleased.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, but she was telling me how lucky I was that she even considered taking me on, and her forge is still small -”

“She’ll take him,” Ukai-jiisan says, smiling like a shark. “Don’t worry your head about that, boy. You’ll see him at the forge tomorrow morning.”

“Right,” Hajime says, exchanging a look with Keishin-nii. “I’ll be going then. Good night.”

“Night, Hajime,” Keishin-nii says, picking up the tray with a clatter. “Tell your mother I’ll drop by with the catch tomorrow morning, yeah?”

“Sure, Kei-nii. Excuse me.”

He backs out of the room bowing, and huffs out a long breath when he steps into the night air. Ukai-jiisan is good and kind, but he can be terrifying, and Asahi doesn’t seem like a particularly courageous person.

He just hopes he can make it through a week without breaking down - or running away. 

⸶⸷

Asahi follows the girl - Yacchan? Hitoka? - through a confusing series of corridors that all look the same. She’s much smaller than him, maybe a year or two younger, and her hair is a pale colour he’s never seen on a human before. Suga’s hair had looked similar, but -

He shakes his head, fighting the rising tears back for what feels like the tenth time that day, the hundredth time that week. He can’t break down now, not in front of her. He has a place to stay, and food to eat, and people who seem to be kind - at least for the present. It’s the best situation he’s been in since he - well, since he lost his family, and he can’t afford to arouse any suspicion. Crying would lead to questions he wouldn’t be able to answer; he can’t give them the truth, and he doesn’t know enough about land-dwellers to lie convincingly.

The war is a very convenient excuse for his situation, though, he’s lucky that it’s happening right now. And given how often they’d mentioned it, a few tears now and then hopefully shouldn’t be particularly suspicious. He’d seen it in the distance when he was walking inland, heard the cries and shouts and smelt the blood. He’d run as soon as he realised what it was, and hadn’t stopped running for half a day. All because some fat lords wanted more land to rule, and they had soldiers to spare -

“A-Asahi?” the girl’s quavering voice says. “The - the bath is right through here.”

She slides a door open, and they step into a courtyard, where a small pond is steaming in the chilly air.

“You, um, wash yourself off with the water from there -” She gestures to a tub of water off to the side. “And when you’re clean you can sit in the hot water for as long as you want.”

“T-thank you,” he mumbles, wondering if he’s supposed to disrobe while she’s still there. Don’t humans have a lot of formal rules about the differences between males and females and times when clothes are not only appropriate but necessary? Will he be thrown out if he makes a mistake here? Can he ask her?

“Um,” she says, biting her lip fiercely and looking everywhere but his face. “Um, can I ask- you don’t have to say if you don’t want to, but - was it - did you lose your family to - to the war?”

“Um, something like that,” he murmurs. “I - I would rather not -”

“Oh, of course, I’m so sorry,” she exclaims. “I shouldn’t have - I didn’t mean -”

She lapses into red-faced silence, looking guilty enough that he feels a little sorry for her.

“By what name do I call you?” he says softly, hesitantly, and she darts a look at him.

“M-my name is Hitoka, but most people call me Yacchan. Um, either one is fine.”

“What do you prefer?”

The looks she gives him is longer this time, with a shy hint of a smile. “Yacchan is - is cute and short, and I do like it, but it - it would be nice if someone called me Hitoka. I, um, haven’t heard it in a while. And if I’m calling you Asahi, then . . .”

“Hitoka, then,” he says, managing to smile back. “Um, Ukai-ojiisan mentioned some rules . . . ?”

“Oh, yes. Um, number one is don’t make the house dirty. He really loves it - he built most of it himself, actually. So - so you have to bathe every day, and wash your futon and clothes often and keep them clean, and be careful not to get mud inside, and if you break something or tear one of the paper walls you have to tell him immediately. He might be a little angry, but never for long, and he’ll show you how to fix it. Number two is be on time for meals and help cook them if you’re asked to. Number three is you have to learn to do something that’ll let you earn a living. Keishin-nii is the best fisherman in the village, and Daichi-nii helps Iwa-nii’s mom out at the tavern and fishes with Keishin-nii in the season, and Ukai-ojiisan is teaching me to write.” She makes a flowy gesture with one hand. “With ink and brushes, you know? Not a lot of people can do it.”

“Oh, I see. Um, H-Hajime told me I should go to the forge tomorrow, because the blacksmith might take me on as an apprentice?”

“Oh, that’s perfect! I’m sure Saeko-san will take you. She and her younger brother used to live here too, you know? You’ll have his old room, actually. They’re both really nice - kinda loud, but really nice!”

“I’m glad to hear that. I - I think I don’t do well with - with harsh people, and rude people.” He’d met more than enough of them, people who snapped for him to get out of their way on busy streets or scolded him for the state of his clothes or chased him away from their houses when he’d had to resort to begging. 

She nods earnestly. “I know, I hate those kinds of people too. They just have to glare at me and I get a scared squirmy feeling in my stomach. I thought Ukai-ojiisan and Keishin-nii were like that when I came here because Ukai-ojiisan yells at him a lot and he yells back. But they actually really care about each other, and Daichi-nii too. When I’m upset or scared, I can go to any of them and they’ll talk to me for as long as I need until I calm down.”

“That does sound nice. Um, how long have you been here?”

Her face falls a little. “Some - some weeks now, not too long. Daichi-nii has been here for four years.”

“Was - was it the war for you both?”

She shrinks a little more, her fingers tight on the edge of her sleeves. “It - it was for me. I don’t know about him. No one knows except Ukai-jiisan and Keishin-nii . . . Well, um, those are the three rules - cleanliness, punctuality, and learning a trade. We help out around the house and in the village if we’re asked to, too. You can go ahead with your bath, um, it looks like you really need to wash that blood off. Daichi-nii’ll be here soon, so I’ll -”

“Wait -” he says, remorseful, as she backs away. “I’m sorry to - I did not mean to -”

Her smile is faint. “It’s all right, it’s not your fault for asking. I asked you too. It’s just - still a little hard for me to talk about. I’ll - I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

“Oh . . . sure. Um, good night.”

“Good night.”

He waits for a minute after the door closes behind her before stripping and quickly washing off, thankful to be rid of the dirty yukata. The water is steaming hot, and he hops out with a yelp at first, but he manages to get used to it in a few minutes. He ducks his face underwater, squeezing his eyes shut against the heat, and hugs his knees tight as the tears finally escape. It’s partly relief at having found a safe place, but mostly aching longing for home and cold, paralyzing fear that he will never be able to find it again. 

Because it’s been more than two weeks, now. He’s nearly starved, he’s wandered half the countryside, he’s searched and sobbed and begged the uncaring blue of the sea for help but he’s alone, and he doesn’t know how to go back. He’s stuck here, among land-dwellers, surrounded by people who sing songs of trapping his kind, of stealing their skins, of forcing them to stay where they don’t belong - surrounded by people kin to one who did in fact steal his skin, who did trap him here, who tore him apart from his family irrevocably and probably without a single thought.

And his only chance of going back is to find his skin, a goal that seems utterly unattainable in this moment. Maybe if he was assured of food and water every day, if he was determined and confident and knew enough about land-dwellers to be able to search the country, if he knew who might have taken his skin and how it’s likely to have changed hands, he could search. But he is none of that, _none_ of that, and it feels like wretched, wretched betrayal, but in this hopelessness after two lost weeks of painful, desperate searching, all he can think is that he can learn to live among them, that he has to, that it is all he can possibly do now. Some of them are good, some of them are kind, some of them helped him when he was lost and crying and hungry. But they are not his people, they never will be, they will never have salt in their blood or hear the waves sing in their souls. And if any of them knew what he really was, they would - they would -

“Your clothes are over here,” a voice calls, and he lifts his head with a gasp, blinking water out of his eyes. Daichi lays a bundle of cloth on a rock nearby, smiling cheerfully. “If you need help with any of it, just call me, yeah?”

“Okay,” Asahi mumbles. “Thank you.”

“No problem. Your face is really red, did you know that?”

“J-Just the heat,” he says, praying that the lie isn’t caught.

“Mm, it takes some getting used to,” Daichi says placidly. “Hey, how old are you?”

“Oh, um, fourteen?”

“Oh, the same as me and Hajime! Good, I was worried you'd be one more person who could order me around.”

“I- I wouldn’t -” Asahi stammers, and Daichi laughs. 

“I know, I’m teasing. Splash some cold water on if the heat gets too much. I’ll be waiting to show you to your room, okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m coming.”

Daichi is kind, he thinks as he’s led to his room. Daichi is kind, and attentive, and obviously wants him to be at home here. “Tell me if you have any questions, okay?” he says as he leaves. “I’ll wake you at sunrise tomorrow. I hope you’ll be happy here, Asahi.”

A choked laugh catches in Asahi’s throat as the door slides shut, and he buries his face in the (very comfortable) futon they’ve given him. _Happy? Here?_

But he doesn’t have a choice, and if he must try and make his peace with his situation, this seems to be by far the best place to try. He still cries himself to sleep, as he does every night, but when he falls asleep it’s with the knowledge that he’s safe for the first time since this nightmare began.

True to his word, Daichi wakes him at sunrise, when mist is still lying like cream between the hills. Asahi helps him and Keishin prepare breakfast. He cuts vegetables clumsily, he eats with the rest, he dresses as best he can, he fumbles through a prayer to the house shrine with Daichi, and walks down the hill with him to the village, anxiety tightening around his chest like burning steel bands.

He knows, vaguely, what a blacksmith does, and handling fire and molten metal all day long does not seem like particularly safe or enjoyable work. But he has to do something if he’s to live in Crow House, and Hajime will be there - Hajime with the frank words and sure eyes - and that is enough to reconcile him to it. Besides, it’s not like he can suggest anything else that he can do.

They enter the village, already busy and bustling in the early morning light. A few people are hurrying down a wide path that leads eastward, late to their fishing boats. The market’s food and produce stalls are busy, tending to dozens of customers. Daichi leads him through the crowd, holding his hand tight so they aren’t separated, and they’re soon standing in front of a high roofed, thatched building that looks like it might sink into the ground not too long from now.

“This is it,” Daichi says. “Saeko-nee’s forge. She and Ryuu live here now, in the back.”

Asahi cranes his neck, trying to peer into the gloom within. “They - they really live here?”

Daichi chuckles. “I’m sure their room isn’t quite like the rest of it - “

“Yo, Daichi boy!” A short woman steps out, dusting soot off her hands. She has a square of cloth tied over her head and a heavy leather apron around her waist. “It’s been a while! Who’s this?”

“Morning, Saeko-nee! This is Asahi,” Daichi says, pushing Asahi forward with a gentle hand on his back. “He came to Crow House yesterday, Hajime brought him. You got space for one more apprentice?”

“Hmph,” Saeko mutters, looking Asahi up and down, and he fingers the edge of his new yukata nervously. “Yeah, he mentioned. Well, you’ve got strength in your body, that’s for sure, even if you need feeding up. I’ve already got Hajime and Ryuu though, I don’t know if -”

“Ukai-jiisan thought you might say that,” Daichi says, grinning. “He said to tell you -”

Saeko groans, waving a hand. “Yeah, okay, you don’t have to say anything, I can imagine what he said. I’ll take him.” 

She steps forward, reaching for Asahi’s wrists briskly. He has to force himself to stand still, like last night, as she inspects his hands and forearms.

“Mmm. I’ll take you, kid, but you’re not touching anything until these wounds are healed. You can watch and learn for a bit. Know anything about smithing?”

“No, ma’am,” he stammers. “I’m sorry, I -”

“Well, that ain’t a problem. You’ll learn, you look bright. For now, you only have to remember two things - if I tell you to do something, do it first and ask questions later, and if you break something or hurt yourself, tell me first and do something about it later. Got it?”

“Y-Yes, ma’am.”

“Saeko-san is fine. Come in, then, let’s get started, we don’t have all day. Hajime’s already in the back. Daichi, you can come and get him at sunset.”

“Got it.” Daichi pats his back reassuringly. “Have a good day, Asahi.”

“T-Thank you, you too!” Asahi stammers over his shoulder as Saeko ushers him forward. Daichi gives him one last smile, and Asahi turns to duck inside after Saeko. It takes him a good minute to adjust to the dimness, Saeko pushing him to the back the whole time. She gestures to the back wall, at an impressive array of tools and weapons.

“You’ll spend your first couple of days here memorizing their names and uses,” she says. “Hajime’ll help you. Hey, Hajime!”

“Yeah!” Hajime’s head pops around the corner, splitting into a grin when he sees Asahi, and the bands around his chest loosen just a little as he musters a smile in return.

“Teach him what you know,” Saeko says briskly. “I’ll ask you what you learned in a couple of hours. He’s in your care.”

“Understood.” Hajime comes to stand with the two of them, and his eyes are dark and warm and reassuring in the dancing light of the forge. “I’ve got him, Saeko-san.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback is very much appreciated :) The posting of all 8 chaps is gonna be spread out a bit, just fyi, but I should be done in a day


	2. bandaged, embraced, family

_The next day_

“Food,” Hajime says, setting down a steaming bowl with a thump and sitting down. “Eat.”

“Oh -” Asahi blinks, and gives him a wavering smile. “Thank you, but -”

“How many square meals do you need a day?”

“Uh - um, two?”

“Yeah, people usually manage with that, but Saeko-san’ll work us hard, so when she feeds us, you take it.” He nods to the bowl. “You’ll be grateful later.”

His tone is kind but no-nonsense. Asahi figures it’s easier not to argue. He picks up his chopsticks, and Hajime pulls his own bowl towards him with a satisfied nod.

“How’re you finding Crow House?”

“They’re very kind people. I’m grateful for the room they’ve given me.”

“Mhmm. Think you'll be happy there?”

“I - I don’t know. I hope so . . .”

“I think it’ll be hard not to be.” Hajime blows on his bowl and takes a huge slurp of broth, wiping a stray trail from his chin as he sets it down. “Hey, you done memorizing all the tools she told you to?”

“N-no -”

“We can work on that before she gets back, I’ll get Ryuu to pull them out for us. And -”

“Yes?”

Hajime grins at him. “If I ever get too much, too overbearing or too many questions or whatever, just let me know, and I’ll tone it down. I ain’t gonna be miffed. If you need space, you gotta tell me, since I’m real bad at telling by myself. Yeah? Cuz you were lookin’ a bit overwhelmed there. ”

“Oh, um, sure. I’ll - I’ll keep that in mind.” Asahi smiles back. “Thank you.”

“No problem. Hey, me and Daichi were gonna go down to the beach in the evening, help Keishin-nii pull in the catch. You wanna come?”

“No.”

Hajime’s eyes go wide for a second, startled by the flat negative, and Asahi winces.

“Sorry, I just - being around the ocean, around the water, it’s - it’s hard for me.”

“Oh. Okay, then how about just the sand?”

“Even the sand. I really can’t. I’m sorry.”

He’d almost drowned, a week ago. He’d gone in too far, blinded by tears, deafened by his own cries for someone to come and take him back home - and this body he has now is unwieldy, heavy, it doesn’t know how to swim like his old one. He’d spent what felt like an eternity on the beach afterwards, coughing up salt water from burning lungs.

He’d hadn’t set foot on sand after that, and vowed he wouldn’t again until he found his skin. But he can’t explain this to Hajime -

“Got it,” Hajime says cheerfully. “I ain’t gonna pry. If you can’t, you can’t. Just let one of us know if you feel like you can, yeah? Because we play down there quite a bit, and we’d be glad to have you join.”

“I -” Tears are suddenly threatening to spill, and Asahi swallows hard. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Sure.” Hajime flicks his forehead lightly, smiling like they’ve known each other since they were born. “Eat up, though, Saeko-san’ll be back soon.”

⸶⸷

Tanaka Saeko is loud, forthright, and kind. She does not bear foolishness well, but she answers all questions with patience. Asahi loses his apprehension about working in the forge quickly, despite the heat, the new smells, the scary sounds. Her brother, Ryuu, is a year younger than Asahi and Hajime, and resembles her in so many ways. He divides his time between the forge and the Iwaizumi tavern, just as Daichi divides his time between the tavern and Keishin’s boat.

His progress is slow, at the beginning. Saeko-san doesn’t want to rush him, it seems like, and he appreciates it. A month in, and he’s still learning the different heats that different metals require while Hajime has already moved on to smelting small pieces of ore for arrowheads and lanceheads.

⸶⸷

“Careful,” Ryuunosuke says, tugging Asahi back a step. “It’s going to spit.”

“What -”

Sure enough, the branch sputters and hisses, spraying sparks. Asahi turns wide eyes onto Ryuunosuke. “How did you know that?”

Ryuunosuke snorts, picking up the tongs again. “Haji-nii always brings back the worst firewood. If it ain’t dry, it’ll spit, and if you’re unlucky it’ll put your eye out. Remember that. You okay with the tongs now?”

“I think so, yes.”

“No room for ‘I think’ in a forge, Asahi-san. You gotta be certain, or you’ll get burned.”

“I am certain, then.”

“Good.” Ryuunosuke slaps him on the back. “Do it again, then, and I’ll watch ya.”

He watches him turn the coals over so they burn evenly. He’s doing much better now than he had been a week ago, and it’s a good sight to see.

“Hey, Asahi-san.”

“Yes?”

“How do you write your name?”

“How do I -” Asahi turns to look at him. “I don’t - I don’t know.”

“Oh? Well, that ain’t uncommon. I only know how to write mine ‘cuz the geezer taught me. It’s got ‘dragon’ in it, isn’t that cool?”

Asahi looks lost. “Dragon?”

Ryuunosuke’s eyebrows go up. “Your parents never told you stories about dragons?”

“No, they - they told me about, um, giant squid that live in the deepest parts of the ocean, and a warrior who went down to fight them . . . and about these little fish who could turn into the prettiest lights, and they’d sing to you, but if you followed them they might take you to their master and you might get eaten. And some others . . .”

“Oh, wow.” Ryuunosuke sits up straight. “I haven’t heard any of these before! You must have lived pretty far away, huh?”

“Pretty far,” Asahi agrees with a weak smile.

“Will you tell me about -”

Saeko sticks her head in, scowling when she sees what they’re doing. “Quit yappin’ and watch the coals, numbskulls, or we won’t be able to start that katana till tomorrow!”

“Sorry, sorry,” Ryuunosuke calls after her, winking at Asahi when she’s gone. “I’ll swing by Crow House today, and you tell me your stories, yeah?”

“Sure,” Asahi says, smiling stronger now. “And, um -”

“Yeah?”

“Will he - will he teach me to write my name? Ukai-jiisan?”

Ryuunosuke grins wide, patting him on the arm. “He sure will, Asahi-san. And if he doesn’t, I will!”

⸶⸷

He learns about them, his new family. Ukai-jiisan was a former samurai, turning his back on a life of blood to settle down in this village and cycle through multiple professions before turning to trading and growing rich. He is the only one in the village who wears silk, and he will not sit down to breakfast until he is attired in a perfectly arranged kimono, something that Keishin dutifully helps him with every morning. He started using a cane last year and despises it; ten years ago he could race Keishin to the top of the hill and down. They all trip over the abandoned cane lying in various parts of the house on various occasions, and when it is returned to him he acts as though he has no clue how it was misplaced. His eyes are still keen, however, and he wields a kitchen knife with precision terrifying enough to reduce the onions to tears. When he laughs, it is hearty and booming, and infects all of them. His competitiveness is as a child’s when he is challenged, but his wisdom when they go to him for help is unparalleled. He is unbending in his rules and in his expectations of them, but he cares for them as deeply as though they are his own flesh and blood.

⸶⸷

“Wrong,” Ukai-jiisan says sharply, and Asahi falters with his obi. “Come here.”

He goes to stand in front of the wiry old man, who quickly picks apart the hakama he’s wearing.

“Himo is knotted above the obi first, child,” he says, turning him around so he can tie the knot at his back. “Then around the front, and back again, this time below the obi. Hera, where’s the hera?”

“Here, ojiisan.”

“It is to be tucked in, like this. Turn.”

Asahi does, and receives an approving nod. “You look good. Strong. Remember how to tie this, yes?”

“I will, ojiisan.”

“Good. The girl is treating you well?”

“The - Saeko-san? Yes, she’s very patient with me.”

“Mm. So she learned something here, then. We will have yukata for you when you return this evening, as well as a formal kimono. One never knows when the occasion for it might arise. Keeping them clean is your responsibility, you know this?”

“Yes, ojiisan.”

“You have three sets of hakama as well, for your work. In two years, we will make you seven, but until you stop growing, you must make do with these.”

 _Two years?_ a voice of dismay whispers. Asahi pushes it down, though he thinks something might have shown on his face from the sharp look Uki-jiisan gives him.

“Thank you for everything you have given me,” he says, bowing. Ukai-jiisan huffs, poking his arm with one finger.

“Your gratitude is unnecessary. Hurry along, now, it will not do to be late.”

Daichi is waiting for him with Keishin, both with bundles of net on their shoulders. Ukai-jiisan’s hand is warm on Asahi’s back for a moment as he pushes him through the door.

“Do well, child,” he says, smiling slightly. “I will make sure there is something good on the table for you when you return. We might finally tempt that appetite of yours, eh?”

⸶⸷

Hitoka is a darling, gentle and kind and resolute in all that she puts her mind to, and Asahi knows doubts assail her like rain but she weathers the storm with a strong heart each time. She had arrived at Crow House a bare month before him, clutching a little blood stained knife and trembling in every limb. The knife is now clean, but she still sleeps with it under her pillow. She already reads nearly as well as Daichi, and she is the only one allowed into Ukai-jiisan’s study, where he keeps precious old scrolls and books without number. She reads to them all at night, sometimes, tales of gods and stars and yokai, of love and bravery and duty. 

Then there’s Daichi. Daichi is the one to draw him out, to coax him to eat, to teach him to play cards, to teach him to wrestle, to teach him to sing sailing songs. Daichi is the sun of the household, all sure strength and steady smiles as he shoulders responsibility after responsibility with an unmatchable sense of purpose. His sturdy shoulders seem like they could carry the world, if they had to, and they carry Asahi often enough in his first days there. Asahi is most grateful to him after Hajime, he thinks, just for the strength of his smile. He catches a whisper in the corridors, once, of illegitimacy (it takes him a while to understand what that means), of abandonment, of a child standing lost on the doorstep of Crow House with nothing of the beautifully broad smile he now wears, with nothing of the deep warmth in his eyes that now illuminates his every move. That is all he ever hears of Daichi’s life before Crow House, and truly that is all he wishes to know, because of them all, the sense of this place being home runs deepest in Daichi's bones, and always will.

Daichi becomes quiet and lost in memory for a day or two when the season turns from spring to summer, and one of those days Asahi sees Keishin with him in the kitchen, Keishin’s eyes gravely tender as he slings an arm across Daichi’s shaking shoulders and presses a quiet kiss into his hair. Daichi’s smile as he looks up is wavering, and there are tears in the corners of his eyes. 

Asahi carries the aching memory of that moment of vulnerability for a long time.

⸶⸷

“Here,” Daichi says, setting a clay cup down and sitting beside Hajime, swinging his legs over the side of the veranda. “Barley tea.”

“Thanks, Dai.” Hajime curls his hands around the cup, soaking in the warmth. Across the garden, Keishin is making a wry face down at his scolding grandfather. Asahi, holding the shaking ladder, looks like he doesn’t know whether to intervene or not.

“He’s doin’ well,” Daichi says, following Hajime’s gaze and taking a sip from his own cup. “It’s been, what, two months since he’s come? At two months here I was still sleeping in Ukai-jiisan’s bed, still wasn’t eating well, still refused to come out of my room much. He helps out a lot around the house. Started eatin’ properly, too, he eats almost as much as me. Yacchan is teachin’ him to read, the two of them are great friends.”

“He’s better at the forge, too,” Hajime replies. “He’s more sure of himself, he doesn’t quail every time Saeko-san looks at him, he handles the metal easily.”

“That’s nice to hear. He’s a good guy.”

“Mm, yeah, he really is. My Ma adores him, too. Just - a little too unsure of himself, still.”

“I don’t know, I think maybe apologizin’ for every little thing is part of who he is,” Daichi smiles.

Hajime snorts. “If it is, I hope he gets over it soon.”

“Mm.”

“Has he . . . he hasn’t told you where he came from, still?”

“No.” Daichi looks into his tea, solemn. “You?”

“No.” Hajime takes a long gulp, nearly draining the cup. “He looks like he’s been cryin’, some mornings.”

“He probably has. I can hear him, on really quiet nights.”

“Mm. I get this feeling that it’s . . . something worse than the war that brought him here.”

“I know what you mean.” Daichi’s eyes follow Hitoka as she comes out to take the apricots inside. “But he won’t say.”

“No.”

“And we can’t force him.”

“I know.” Hajime watches Asahi tuck his hair behind one ear, smiling shyly at Hitoka as she offers him an apricot to bite into. “I know.”

“You really care about him.”

He turns to Daichi at that, meeting his quizzical look with a blank one of his own. “Shouldn’t I?”

“No, just - I didn’t expect it.”

“He’s - well. He’s like another you, I guess.”

“Oh?” Daichi grins. “High praise.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Hajime snorts, pushing his knee. “I just feel like - I don’t know. The three of us fit together really well.”

“Mm, I agree.” Hitoka wipes apricot juice off of Asahi’s mouth, looking like she’s saying something exasperated, and Asahi smiles sheepishly at her. Daichi gives them a fond look, one finger tracing the rim of his cup. “And I think he’ll be alright.”

⸶⸷

Keishin has a hint of wanderlust in his heart, Asahi sometimes thinks, a hint of longing to explore the world and test his limits. But his responsibility to his family he performs with true and deep affection, though he smacks the backs of their heads when they are loud or rowdy and rolls his eyes behind his grandfather’s back when he is irate. None of the three of them have the heart to tell him that the only difference between the two of them is that the elder Ukai snaps in irritation while the younger yells in exasperation. He has his grandfather’s laugh, his grandfather’s shark-like smile, his kindness and his intelligence. Asahi learns that Daichi and Hitoka go to Keishin first when they are troubled, certain of welcoming arms, a ready ear, and sound advice. Hitoka sometimes goes to his room in the dead of night to curl up next to him when she cannot sleep for the terrors resounding in her head.

⸶⸷

Keishin slides the door to the veranda aside, quietly enough that it’s not audible over the crash of thunder and the thunder of the rain. Asahi is wearing one of his old yukatas and facing away from him, curled against a pillar like a hiding cat. 

“You missed dinner,” he says, and Asahi turns quickly.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to -”

“It’s all right.” Keishin closes the door behind him and sits next to Asahi. “The geezer was a little worried, though. No appetite today?”

“Something like that,” Asahi mumbles. Lightning flashes, and Keishin can briefly see tear tracks on his face.

“Mm. I saved you a bowl.”

“Daichi can have it, I don’t think I’ll eat today. If that’s all right.”

“That’s fine.” He reaches out, holding a lock of Asahi’s hair between two fingers. “Still wet. Saeko should really have let you boys leave the forge earlier, it’s been storming all week. You could have fallen on your way up the hill.”

“I made it up okay.”

“No thanks to her.”

Asahi smiles faintly, just for a second. “You don’t like her, do you?”

Keishin chuckles, tucking the hair back behind his ear. “Nothing like that. She's a great person. We just - we have a history. And I’m just a little irritated at the moment that she didn’t have more care for my brother’s safety.”

Asahi ducks his head. “I’ve only been here half a year,” he says, so quietly Keishin nearly doesn’t hear it.

He hums, shifting to sit behind Asahi, and runs his fingers through his hair. They sit in silence for a while as Keishin gets the tangles out.

“Hajime told me,” Keishin says at length, “that you don’t like storms.”

Asahi’s shoulders rise to his ears. “They remind me of the ocean,” he murmurs. 

“Is that so?” Hajime had also said that when the first rain had begun, Asahi had dropped a hammer on his foot in terror, that it was as though he’d never been in a storm before.

“Mmhm. The sound of it.”

“That’s a shame. I used to love storms, when I was a child.” Keishin squeezes his hair gently, trying to get some of the water out. “It was just me and the geezer, back then, Makkun and Tattsun hadn’t shown up as yet. He’d put on a pot of flower tea from the spring, and we’d listen to the rain, and he’d tell me why the lightning and thunder were fighting. And when the rain stopped, it was like everything had been washed clean.”

“That sounds nice.”

Keishin pulls back the hair above his ears, beginning to braid the strands together so they’ll stay in place. “It was. What I’m wondering now, though, is - if you hate the ocean, and the storm reminds you of it, why’d you choose to come and sit out here?”

Asahi doesn’t reply. Keishin doesn’t push him. He finishes the braid, runs his hand through Asahi’s hair once more, and rests his hand on the top of his head for a moment.

“Even if you’ve only been here half a year, we’re your family as long as you choose to think of us as such. As long as you choose to stay here. And you’re under no obligation to tell us anything you don’t want to, but if you ever do, know that I will always be willing to listen. I will always _want_ to listen. I want to know why you hate the ocean, what happened to your parents, where you lived before coming here. I want to know so that I can tell you the ocean will never hurt you again, and take you out fishing. I want to know so that I can take you home. I want to know so I can find your parents for you.” 

Asahi turns to face him with tears in his eyes and such anguish on his face that Keishin thinks he feels his heart break a little.

“I can’t tell you,” he whispers. “I can’t tell anyone. Not you, not Daichi, not Hitoka, not even - not even Hajime - I -”

Keishin leans down and presses a long kiss to his forehead, holding him with a hand on each of his cold cheeks.

“That’s all right,” he says, forcing his voice to stay steady. “That’s all right. I wish you could, but if you can't, it’s all right. We’ll be here with you until you can. You hear me?”

Asahi nods, eyes squeezed shut, and Keishin kisses his temple briefly before rising.

“I’ll have tea on the stove,” he says over his shoulder, smiling as he steps back inside. “Whenever you’re ready, Asahi.”

⸶⸷

He meets Makoto-san and Yuusuke-san, the former a skilled carpenter and the latter the assistant to the village doctor. They had grown up in Crow House almost a decade ago, and they come by to stay for a night or two sometimes. They too are kind, and treat Asahi like a younger brother from the moment they meet him.

He works in the forge from dawn to dusk, most days. It is hard, tiring work, but rewarding, and it helps him settle. He learns how to live among them, these people who cannot breathe under water and bask in the sun for most of their lives, who wear clothes and cook food and pray to a hundred different gods for a hundred different reasons. He makes them weapons, at first, and then discovers a set of dusty clay casts in the back of the forge, and then he makes them jewellry. He enjoys it, and he’s good at it, and even Saeko-san praises the designs he creates. She buys him the ore and leaves him to it, inspecting his glittering work with a sharp grin and a slap to his back. Eight months after he starts working at the forge, after a few mangled attempts, the chief of the village buys a set of his work for his entire family, and people begin to come in from villages fifty kilometres away just to purchase what he makes. It begins to bring more business to the village, something he cannot help but be proud of.

Hajime continues to help Saeko-san craft swords, arrows, lances, shields. The war dies down a mere month after it had begun, but there is always something else, always a shogun who wants more or a village that must protect themselves from bandits, and they do brisk business as well. The Tanaka forge becomes famous enough that Saeko-san sometimes drags in even Daichi and Keishin to work the bellows and pour the water as she tries to oversee the forging of three swords and a lance simultaneously.

And Hajime - the one who found him this home, the one who called out to him when he ran - Hajime is all firm kindness and low laughter, rough words and sure action. He works hard and sincerely, he helps Asahi with anything and everything without being asked to, and he’s the first one to make him laugh on land. He sees Hajime staying late in the forge, once, watching Saeko-san hammer out a broad blade for the neighbouring lord, and his grey-brown eyes are so bright and intense and beautiful in his soot-streaked face that Asahi thinks even Hitoka’s lovely smile pales a little in comparison. Hajime is never far from his side, he finds, and it is far more of a comfort than he could ever have imagined.

⸶⸷

“This is a really bad idea, Hajime,” Asahi hisses.

“Worrywart,” Hajime says, stepping into Daichi’s cupped hands. “We’ll be out before she even knows we were here.”

“Daichi,” Asahi says, pleading, as Hajime disappears into the tree’s branches. “We’ll get caught!”

“Live a little,” Daichi grins back, and oh, Asahi knows that look on his face. “Like Haji said, we’ll be out before she ever knows we were here.”

“Heads up!” Hajime’s voice calls. Nashi pears come tumbling down one by one, and Daichi catches them all deftly.

“I take no responsibility for this,” Asahi grumbles, taking them out of his arms and heading to the wall. “Ryuu!”

There’s an answering whistle, and Asahi tosses them over as quickly as he can. 

“Don’t you dare drop any, Ryuu!” Daichi shouts over his shoulder, fielding more pears with ease.

“I got it, Dai-nii, I got it,” Ryuu calls back. “Gods, look at these beauties! We’re gonna be feastin’ for -”

“Hey! What are you boys doing?!” The shout is distant, from the house, but there’s no doubt that the orchard owner will call her guards together in no time.

“I _told_ you,” Asahi groans, wringing his hands nervously. “Hajime, get down!”

Hajime curses, and leaves flutter to the ground around them as his hasty descent shakes the branches. Asahi pushes Daichi to the wall, giving him a quick boost that nearly tips him over the top.

“You better pray she doesn’t tell the geezer,” he hisses up at him, and ignores his laughter and his delighted “You finally called him the geezer!” as he goes back for Hajime, who’s struggling to keep five more luscious pears in his arms as he hurries to Asahi.

“Will you drop those?” Asahi snaps, pulling him along by the arm.

“After all the trouble we went through to get them?” Hajime replies indignantly. “How can you even suggest -”

“You’re an idiot,” Asahi says, yanking them out of his arms. “Daichi, Ryuu, catch!”

Hajime yelps as he tosses them over the wall. “They’re not _rocks_ , Asahi, be a little more careful!”

Asahi rounds on him, settling one hand firmly on either side of his waist. “You’re the biggest idiot I’ve ever met in my life,” he informs him, and hoists him up with some effort. Hajime wobbles as his ass is parked neatly on top of the wall, and stares down at Asahi like he’s just announced an intention to rid the world of all pear trees or something.

“What?” Asahi demands. “Go over, I can’t jump across if you don’t move!”

Hajime stares at him for one long moment more, the late autumn light catching his eyes in a way that almost makes them glow. “You just -”

“Yes, yes, and you owe me! Now _move_ , they’re getting closer!”

He finally does, and Asahi scrambles over after him, an arrow shot from a guard’s crossbow narrowly missing one of his feet. On the other side, Daichi and Ryuu are already far up the dusty road, while Hajime is waiting for him.

“You,” Asahi pants as they sprint away, “owe me _so much_ for this, you reckless, greedy, stupid -”

Hajime laughs, and somehow the light is still caught in his eyes, though they’re in the shadow of the wall now. “Is it alright if I pay you in pears?” he grins, broad and cheeky, and Asahi smacks the back of his head hard, but he can't help smiling too.

⸶⸷

They’re notorious, the three of them, especially when they’re joined by Ryuu. The stalls in the market double their guard over all edible wares if any shopkeeper happens to catch even a glimpse of them. The slopes of the hills are covered in blooming flowers in the spring and summer, and there isn’t a single meadow they don’t explore together. There’s one in particular, full of wild bushes of camellia and hydrangea, that’s marked by an old, majestic maple tree on one side. It stands a little way below Crow House, and that tree marks the start and end of their races, in which Asahi is always first, and Hajime is always last. They hunt rabbits in the woods, they race up and down the hills, they make stupid bets with each other about who is strongest, though they all know Hajime can lift the heaviest boulders, and they know they are loyal to each other. 

Asahi’s voice breaks, within a year. It becomes all squeaky and scratchy and then, a month or two later, deep and husky and odd-sounding to his own years. His body becomes taller, heavier, more sturdy, and he can lift Hajime or Daichi with ease whenever he pleases. Hitoka, he can lift with one arm. Hair starts growing on his face, in his armpits - almost all over his body, really - and it gets to be quite irritating, but he can’t bother to shave every day like Hajime and Daichi do. Ukai-jiisan clicks his tongue at his beard, but says nothing.

It’s like a cage, this body he has.

There’s a new arrival perhaps a year and a half after Asahi meets Hajime. There’s a knock at the door, almost drowned out by the blustery winds that have been blowing intermittently for days to herald the monsoon. Asahi is sent to see who it is, and is just in time to stop the boy from collapsing. He is tall and lanky, with uneven hair brushing his shoulders and freckles standing out against his deathly pale skin, and looks to be about Hitoka’s age. A rough staff drops from one limp hand, and Asahi realises with horror that the boy’s right leg is gone from below the knee.

He brings him inside with as much caution as he can muster, cradling him to his chest and yelling for help. Keishin-nii takes one look and hastily ducks under the entrance curtain to go and fetch Yuusuke-san. Daichi helps carry the boy to the most comfortable futon they have, and Hitoka hovers nervously, fetching tea and bandages and towels and whatever else she can think of that might help. Ukai-jiisan takes his pulse, looks him over with somber eyes, and pronounces him to be in no danger as long as his leg is looked at without delay. Yuusuke-san arrives quickly, does this duty, and Asahi has a new brother.

His name is Yamaguchi Tadashi, and he reminds Asahi of himself when he’d first arrived, all nervous eyes and trembling words as he tries to adjust to this new life. He blossoms soon, however, into sweet laughter and an eagerness to help whenever and wherever he can. He and Hitoka soon become fast friends, and when Makoto-san takes him on as an apprentice he lets Daichi and Asahi compete to see who can carry him down the hill faster with good grace. Makoto-san makes him a wooden leg, and though he will never be able to run he can at least walk, and does so for astonishing distances.

⸶⸷

“Need help?” Asahi asks as he walks into the kitchen. Daichi and Tadashi are hard at work, cutting up two massive piles of vegetables.

“Please,” Daichi says distractedly. “Why on earth didn’t Kei-nii remind me it was ojiisan’s birthday earlier? He knows I always forget.”

Asahi chuckles, seating himself and reaching for a knife. “You’ve known for six years, Daichi -”

“But I still forget, and he knows that!”

“We’ll finish in time, Dai-nii,” Tadashi says in his soft voice. “Hitoka’ll come and help us in a bit too.”

Daichi sighs. “Thanks, Tadashi. Let’s do this quickly, then, so we can get started on the other dishes.”

Asahi, reaching for a yam, notices that Tadashi’s wooden leg has been placed neatly to the side. “Is it still hurting you?” he asks, and Tadashi colours faintly when he realizes what he’s referring to.

“Oh, that - yes, Shimada-san said it’s because I'm still growing, so he can’t make the fit perfect until I reach my final height.”

“I didn’t know it was hurtin’ you that badly,” Daichi says, setting down his knife as a small frown gathers at his brow. “Mind if I take a look?”

“Oh - no, go ahead!”

Tadashi determinedly looks everywhere but at Asahi as Daichi gently rolls up the hem of his yukata, and Asahi has to press the back of his hand to his mouth to hide his broad smile.

“It looks a little red,” Daichi says, oblivious to this, peering worriedly at the stump of Tadashi’s leg. He presses right above it with gentle fingers. “Why didn’t you speak up before, Tadashi? I have that medicine Yuusuke-san left last time -”

“It’s not that bad!” Tadashi pulls the hem back down, blushing furiously now. “I can still use the prosthetic, and Makoto-san said he’d come up with a new design by tomorrow, so - I didn’t think it was a problem, I just mentioned it to Asa-nii because he noticed me limping yesterday - I mean, more than usual.”

“All right, then,” Daichi says, going back to his knife with an unconvinced look. “But tell us if it gets too bad, yeah?”

“I will,” Tadashi mumbles. Asahi watches as his gaze lingers on Daichi’s hands, and then his arms, and then the line of his neck and back as he hunches over the chopping board. He clears his throat a little, and Tadashi tears his eyes away, going back to his own work with an expression that’s almost petulant.

 _At least don’t make it too obvious,_ Asahi mouths at him, and gets a tongue stuck out at him in return. He smiles to himself, putting the sliced yam aside and reaching for another one. Tadashi’s feelings are understandable, he thinks. You only have to know Daichi to love him, and the gravity of his smile is powerful enough that it’s no surprise some fall deeper than most. 

Hitoka hops into the kitchen half a minute later, beaming like an angel, and hugs Tadashi around the neck from behind.

“Kei-nii sent word that ojiisan will be home in an hour and a half!” she says, happily. “So we have more than enough time!”

“Sent word with who?” Daichi asks, and Hajime ducks into the kitchen. 

“With me, of course, errand boy that I am.” He smiles at them all, and gives the vegetables a considering look. “I don’t know if an hour and a half is honestly enough, Yacchan, look at this.”

Asahi picks out a knife and offers it to him, smiling involuntarily when Hajime meets his gaze. “You have anywhere to be?”

Hajime sighs, but takes the knife with good grace, and settles next to him. And they do, in fact, give Ukai-jiisan a very good birthday dinner.

⸶⸷

And so the seasons turn, and two years pass. Asahi grows with them all, and settles, but he still wakes up to the salt in his blood scouring the inside of his veins and the call of the ocean seething in the cage of his ribs and the crash of the waves in his ears. It sings to him, his home calls out to him, every minute of every day. After two years, the tears no longer come as freely and agonizingly as they used to before - he can swallow it, now, he can keep to himself - but that deep, deep yearning for his people and for his seas is always there, and he knows it always will be. He would no longer be himself if he could manage to forget it.

He has given up hope of finding his skin, now that he knows more about this land, these people. It could be anywhere, bought by anyone, any rich noble or even perhaps used as a rug in a hovel, and his chances of finding it two years after it has been stolen are as close to none as makes no difference. He cannot break into every house in the land to find it. He knows nothing about the one who took it, nothing that could possibly help him find them, nothing that could have helped him even if he’d set out after them after only a day at Crow House.

After two years of desperate and dashed hope, the knowledge that he will most likely never get his life back still pains him like a physical wound, but - but as terrible as it feels to even think it, his new family is good, his new life is good, and if he never gets his skin, he could not ask for more than this. He still cries himself to sleep some nights, remembering his parents and brother and his sister and all the friends he's left underwater who must all have given him up for dead, but it happens less often as time wears on. He has Hajime and Daichi by his side, he has love, and he has support, and he cannot throw it all away when he has nothing to go on. So he resigns himself, and when the burden gets to be too heavy to bear, when he cannot bring himself to swallow his tears, he has enough people whose hearts are open to him and whose arms are ready to hold him. He has this, and he accepts that it is enough.

After all, what else can he do?


	3. captivated, heartbeat, kiss

“You’re too slow,” Daichi calls down. “Do you want to get there today or next week?”

“Bastard, not all of us were born scrambling up and down hills every day,” Hajime pants, pulling himself up to the next boulder with aching arms. “Aren’t we almost there?”

“It’s that clearing right there,” Daichi says, pointing. “Try not to let your lungs give out before we make it.”

Hajime scowls at him, and Daichi jumps to the next rock with a laugh. “Come on, Haji!”

“Shut up,” Hajime grumbles, looking down to check on the others. Ryuu’s almost caught up to Asahi, who’s only a little way below now.

“Winded?” Hajime calls to him, and is met with a half-scornful smile.

“Which one of us wins all the races again?” Asahi calls back, resuming his climb.

“That’s luck half the time.”

“No one likes a sore loser, you know -”

A rock turns under Asahi’s foot, and he slips with a gasp. Hajime’s arm shoots out and he manages to grab his wrist, gritting his teeth as he’s yanked forward. Asahi lurches dangerously for a moment, but manages to clamber up safely with Hajime pulling him up. They look at each other for a moment, half smiles in both their eyes.

There's nothing to say, no ‘Be careful’ or ‘Thank you’. They know. They’ve known for years, now.

They reach the clearing in one piece, all four of them, and pluck enough persimmons to last them months. Hajime bites into the fifth one of the day as the sun sinks across the sky, and next to him Daichi laughs his beautiful, booming laugh as Ryuu animatedly tells him about the ridiculous official who’d come to commision a sword from Saeko but didn’t have the least clue as to what type he wanted and had then demanded it be done in three days.

“She shoved a hunting knife in his face and said ‘This is the best I can do in three days, sir’, with this _smile_ , and he ran off like -” Ryuu grins, half breathless with laughter, his head pillowed on Daichi’s thigh, looking pleased with himself as Daichi throws his head back and gasps for breath. Asahi watches them, a smile as sweet as the juice on Hajime’s lips curving his mouth, and Hajime smiles with him.

They know. All of them.

⸶⸷

Time rolls on. Hitoka begins to work in the village as a scribe - one of only three, and by far the best. Her penmanship is beautiful, and people flock to her to write their letters, their documents, their missives. She earns, and earns, and that year they all get silk yukatas from her as gifts when summer comes. They wear them to the Tanabata festival, and buy her so many flowers to put in her hair that Tadashi has to carry half of them for her.

It’s that year, the night when Orihime and Hikoboshi are allowed to fall into each other’s arms, that Asahi watches Hajime laughing in the light of warm paper lanterns and feels an odd lurch in his heart. It’s not the waves calling to him, this is softer than that. Less anguished, more tender. Less desperate, more affectionate. Less angry, more longing.

This is - is it - ?

Hajime smiles, eyes fluttering shut for a moment as Hitoka reaches up to tuck a flower behind his ear, and Asahi watches his shoulder blades shift under grey silk as he bends for her, watches soft light dance in the hollow of his throat, and realises exactly what it is.

Hajime glances his way, and his eyes are glowing and warm, and this - this is the start of love, Asahi knows.

And he knows he’s already lost.

⸶⸷

Ryuu stops dead in the doorway of Hajime’s room, staring. “Why is she here?!”

Hitoka bristles instantly, reminding Hajime of a fluffed up kitten. “I have every right to be here too!”

“Dai-nii, come on,” Ryuu says, turning to the rest of them. “You can’t think this is a good idea! The geezer’ll flay ya!”

Daichi grins, holding up a tiny porcelain cup as he slowly slumps into Asahi’s side. “She’s got the right to be here, you gotta give her that.”

Ryuu sighs, closing the door behind him and going to sit next to Daichi. “Don’t say I didn’t warn ya. Tadashi ain’t here?”

“Nah, he’s too tired to make it today. Have as much as ya like,” Hajime slurs, already more than a little tipsy. “We had extra stock. Like . . . _extra_ extra stock, that’s how much extra stock we had.”

Asahi carefully pushes Hajime’s head off of Hitoka’s shoulder and tilts it back to lean against the wall. Hajime squints at him down his nose, almost cross eyed.

“Ya still ain’t drinkin’,” he says grouchily.

“I’m not going to, either,” Asahi says, amused. “I really don’t like the taste of it. And I wouldn’t miss you two like this for the world.”

“Rude,” Daichi says from his other side. “We’re perfectly fine, y’hear me?”

“Sure, Dai-nii,” Hitoka chuckles, taking a dainty sip from her own cup. She’s had about three quarters of what the other two have had, and has yet to show any signs of intoxication. Hajime is briefly and blurrily bewildered by this, but abandons that line of thought in favour of saying what’s been on his mind for the past five minutes.

“Asahi. Hey, Asahi.”

“Yes?”

“Do you know,” Hajime says seriously, slowly, leaning in as close as he can without his head spinning, doing his best to articulate properly. “Do you know that you - _you_ \- have the prettiest eyes I have ever seen - _ever_ seen - in my damn life?”

Asahi’s mouth drops open. Hitoka says “And I think that’s my cue to leave,” and ducks out from between them, going to sit by Ryuu.

“I, uh, feel like that’s an insult to Hitoka,” Asahi says, and Hajime clicks his tongue irritatedly, leaning even closer. Asahi’s eyes are even prettier like this, big and brown and surprised.

“Like a cow,” he says out loud. “But a smart cow, not a dumb cow, because cows are usually pretty darn dumb.”

Asahi bursts into laughter, shoulders shaking with the force of it. “Thanks,” he wheezes. “That’s - that’s very sweet of you.”

Hajime grins, pleased with himself, and leans his forehead against Asahi’s upper arm. “Or like a seal,” he says. “All big and - and liquidy. Is that a word? I don’t think it’s a word. But they’re pretty.”

Asahi is quiet for a second - Hajime is a little surprised, and disappointed, he thought Asahi’d laugh again - and then his hand is on the back of Hajime’s head, fingers gently scratching at his scalp.

“Thank you,” he says again, very quiet now. “That’s nice to hear, Hajime.”

Haime looks up at him, digging his chin into his arm. “Did I make you sad?” he asks, concerned and plaintive, and Asahi smiles at him so kindly and it’s so lovely and they’re so close together that he thinks he might stop breathing.

“You didn’t,” he says, “Don’t worry.”

“Are you sure - ”

“I am.”

Asahi’s smile is fading, he can see it slowly growing smaller, and he’s almost entirely sure that Asahi looks down at his mouth for a second, like he’s thinking - like he wants to -

Ryuu and Hitoka burst into song across from them, Daichi’s face buried in Ryuu’s neck and the three of them swaying together. Asahi jerks, startled, and leans away from Hajime.

“You can use my leg, if you want to lie down,” he says, smiling again, and it’s a nice smile but it’s not the really nice one from before. “You look like you’re going to end up horizontal any minute now.”

But Hajime’ll take what he can get, so he puts his head on Asahi’s leg and, somewhere in between the third song and noticing that Daichi’s arm is for some reason looped securely around Ryuu’s waist, he falls asleep.

⸶⸷

Is he allowed this? They’re brothers, the five of them, he and Hajime and Daichi and Ryuu and Tadashi, and Hitoka is their sister. Is he allowed to - to want Hajime like this? To break that balance?

He’s so much more aware, now, of where Hajime is, what he’s doing, who he’s talking to, how close he is at any given moment. His heart has started jumping in his chest when Hajime greets him in the morning, settling into a hummingbird flutter in his throat when he teases him or slaps him on the back or pats him on the shoulder. His eyes slide to him so often that he has to force them back to focus on what he’s doing in the forge so that he doesn’t hurt himself.

Is he allowed this? Is it fair? Is it fair to break the bonds they have just because he wants more now? Is he allowed to wake up with a start in the night, having dreamt of rough hands on his skin and a knowing grin settled in sharp eyes?

He isn’t. He can’t be. Hajime is - is precious to him. Hajime is good, and strong, and he can’t be so selfish as to want him the way he does when Hajime probably doesn’t want him the same way, when everyone deserves to have Hajime’s affection equally. He can’t. He shouldn’t.

He tells himself this over and over again, yet can’t bring himself to back away from Hajime’s absent touches, from his casual quips, from his low laugh, when all of it makes his stomach float in the nicest of ways. He’s reluctantly miffed when Hajime greets Hitoka or Tadashi or Daichi first when he visits Crow House, he’s even more reluctantly elated when Hajime chooses to sit by him at dinner, and ends far too many of his days steadily thumping his head against the wall in an effort to get Hajime’s smile out of his mind so he can at least go to bed with something like a clear conscience.

He’s often seen Hajime heft heavy lumps of ore, and the sight of his shoulders flexing strong as he heaves the metal up onto the forge is one that he’s almost become inured to. Almost. Handling burning metal with dextrous ease, lugging barrels of liquor for his mother like they’re made of cotton, digging their vegetable beds with easy competence and without a single word of complaint - Asahi has seen it all enough times. What hits him like a hammer, though, is - is seeing Hajime absentmindedly direct a tendril of a creeper to a branch for support as they walk through the woods. Seeing him chuckle delightedly as he play wrestles with a wriggling, wagging puppy in the street. Seeing him silently reach out to tug his mother’s obi into place when it’s slipped in the course of a busy evening at the tavern. Seeing the softness, the tenderness he’s tucked away as if he’s forgotten it exists, come out in the most unguarded of moments.

He can’t. He shouldn’t. He’s not allowed. He tells himself this over and over, and yet he falls into Hajime’s inexorable gravity so excruciatingly slowly.

He tries to stop it. He tells himself that Hajime will never want him like this, with this hulking body and words in his mouth that are still tentative and fumbling all too often. He lists all the things that Hajime could never love about him, and repeats it until he knows it by heart. The first one, of course, is -

\- what if Hajime knew?

⸶⸷

Hajime blinks awake in the cool darkness of his room. Daichi is sitting by the window, reading a scroll in a slim bar of light that makes it through the screen.

“Dai?” he croaks, and Daichi looks up with a smile.

“Look who’s up,” he says, shifting to sit by his futon. “It’s been long enough. Remember anythin’ from yesterday?”

“I . . . “ Hajime frowns, his head throbbing. “I was on my way to the forge, and I met Asahi, and we were going together, and then . . . Saito-san’s cart?”

“Mm. She lost control of the horse, and you were knocked down. Stepped on your shoulder is what Asahi said.”

The memories are coming back, now - the horse’s gleaming chestnut skin in the early light, her wild, rolling eyes, her heavy hooves on Hajime’s back. He shudders a little, involuntarily, and realises something as he does.

“But - my shoulder feels fine. Just a little sore.”

Daichi sighs softly, slinging an arm around one knee. “Ryuu said Asahi ran to him, begged him to go to the ocean and get a pitcher of seawater.”

“A pitcher of - ?”

“He did it. Asahi seemed frantic enough for anything, he said, and looked like he knew what he was doing. He got it, came to your house, and gave it to Asahi, who took it and closed himself in the room with you. By the time Yuusuke-san made it here half an hour later, your bones were lookin’ fine, and the bruises had faded a little.” Daichi gives him a considering look. “Do you remember anythin’?”

There’s something there, in the back of his mind . . . warm hands on his skin, cold water, stinging as it seeped into his wounds, Asahi’s eyes, worried and determined, soft singing, gentle, gentle relief blooming in his shoulder. The fragments are blurry, indistinct, and they fade even as Hajime tries to grasp at them. He will have forgotten it entirely by tonight, he knows.

“I remember somethin’,” he mumbles, trying to concentrate. “Singing? I think? And his hand on my shoulder . . .”

They both look at each other, an oddly solemn silence falling over them.

“As far as Yuusuke-san is concerned, Asahi exaggerated the extent of your injuries in his panic,” Daichi says quietly. “Ryuu’s just happy you’re okay, it was a bit of a whirlwind for him. Your mum didn’t see you when Asahi brought you here, so she has to take his word for how you were injured, too. Saito-san didn’t get a good look at you, Asahi carried you off so fast. There’s no one else who knows how badly you were injured.”

“You wouldn’t have known if he hadn’t told you.”

“No.”

They’ve never said it out loud. They’ve never needed to. It’s been there in the odd ways Asahi’s tongue trips over some words, in his confusion when confronted with a shrine, in his curiosity about the most mundane things and the almost shy way he makes his way through the world, like he doesn’t know where he might step wrong.

They’ve never said it, but they can see that the world he belongs to is not the one he inhabits now, with them.

“He trusts you enough for that, it looks like.”

“Or he was careless in his panic. Or he doesn’t think we’d even think that -” Daichi breaks off, shakes his head. “You won’t ask him, will you?”

“I don’t need to know,” Hajime says, firmly. “He’s just - he’s Asahi. I know who he is. I don’t need to know where he came from.”

“If you say so,” Daichi says, the smile at the corner of his mouth a little sad.

There’s a knock at the door. “Come in,” Daichi calls, and Asahi steps in, hair messy and tumbling over his shoulders, eyes tired. Hajime’s chest aches a little at the sight.

“Hey, Dai, is -” He realises Hajime’s eyes are open, and lights up like a sunrise as he hurries to his side, helping him begin to sit up. “You’re awake! How are you feeling? When did you -”

Hajime slings clumsy arms around his shoulder and squeezes, tight, as he buries his face in his neck. He doesn’t know why the urge to cry is sweeping over him, and he doesn’t particularly care. Asahi’s hands settle on his back lightly, like they might take nervous flight at any moment,

“Hajime?” he says uncertainly.

“Thank the gods for you, you clod,” he mumbles. He wants to say ‘ _Thank you for doing what you did for me_.’ He wants to say ‘ _My name doesn’t sound that way in anyone else’s mouth, and I don’t know why.’_ He wants to say ‘ _I always, always want to be by your side. I want you to always want me by your side._ ’ He wants to say so, so much.

But the words are so many that they stop each other from coming out, piling up against the back of his teeth, and - Asahi knows, doesn’t he?  
  
Whether he does or not, he holds Hajime as long as he stays there, like Hajime knew he would, and when the two of them leave him to rest, Asahi’s smile is like Tadashi’s when he watches children chase each other down the street - tender, but just a little bittersweet.

⸶⸷

Asahi can hear Keishin and Daichi arguing from halfway down the hill, and winces. They so rarely fight that it’s worse than anyone else when they do.

Hajime wrinkles his nose a little -

\- _ahh, he looks adorable -_

\- and throws a card down with a flourish.

“Your turn,” he says. “Gods, they’re loud.”

“They’re really late, I hope nothing bad happened,” Asahi says, peering out of the window before picking his own card. “Ojiisan was getting worried . . . Your turn.”

“You know, there was this time they fought, before you came,” Hajime says, looking through his hand, “when Dai accidentally tore this paper fan that Saeko had given Kei-nii as a gift when they were kids, and man, Dai’s butt was smartin’ for a week. So was Kei-nii’s, when Ukai-jiisan found out why they were fightin’. The arguments shook the house for a week, gods. Ryuu came creepin’ to me for comfort like a scared pup. Saeko-nee just rolled her eyes about the whole thing.”

He puts down his card, and Asahi smiles in triumph, throwing down all of his and collecting the stack.

“My round,” he says, as Hajime groans. “I can’t imagine Kei-nii getting a hiding like that . . . he and Saeko-san were that close, huh?”

“Yeah, they were in a way to gettin’ married, once. Didn’t happen, though, and I think it was probably best for both of ‘em. Can’t see it working between those two.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I think they could -”

“ - more careful, Daichi, it’s not some - some little pool you can splash around in!”

Asahi flinches as the yell echoes around the courtyard. Keishin and Daichi have the day’s catch on their backs in wicker baskets, so involved in their argument that they aren’t even looking where they’re stepping. The window’s wide open, and both Asahi and Hajime can hear every word they say.

“I _was_ careful!” Daichi snaps. “And I can swim like a selkie, Kei-nii -”

“No, _I_ can swim like a selkie,” Keishin barks back. “ _You_ need to be more aware of where the currents are, what if things had gone wrong today -”

_Suga snapped at the falling seaweed, but misjudged the distance. Kiyoko easily took it instead, her sleek form slicing through the water as she shot past him. Asahi swam upwards to her with powerful strokes of his tail, laughing at Suga’s drooping whiskers - Kiyoko winked at him and was gone in a cloud of bubbles, and he gave chase, and they wove through the bars of weak sunlight filtering through the waves -_

“Dumbasses, both of them,” Hajime snorts, turning away from the window as they enter the house. “Dai can swim just fine, and Kei-nii knows it. You up for one more - Asahi? Hey.”

Asahi blinks, turning to see Hajime’s brows furrowed, his eyes concerned. “You okay there?”

“Yeah.” Asahi clears his throat. “Yeah. Just -”

“Yeah, they don’t fight much, but it’ll be fine,” Hajime says. “It blows over real fast between them. Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah,” Asahi says, managing a smile, grateful for Hajime’s well meant comfort, and grateful he doesn't know why he’s truly shaken. “One more round, you said?”

Hajime touches his wrist with light fingertips, still scanning his face, and Asahi’s breath stalls. Hajime lets his fingers rest there for a moment, and smiles, a little relieved.

“One more round,” he agrees, like nothing’s happened. “You’re not winning this time!”

⸶⸷

Hajime doesn’t know when he fell in love with Asahi. It happened so easily, so quietly, and he realises it’s there one day in spring, watching Asahi sitting with Hitoka and dutifully copying his letters from her neat rows, sakura petals caught in his hair.

It could have been any day, he thinks. If it hadn’t been the contrast of the pale pink sakura with the rich brown of his eyelashes, it could have been the red-orange of the forge fire on his forearms, or the reflection of the stream behind Hajime’s house in his eyes, or - anything, really. He’s surprised he didn’t realise sooner.

The spark had probably settled somewhere deep inside him the day they stole those pears, when he thinks about it. But it feels so deeply rooted in his heart, like he’s always just known, like he’s never _not_ known what it’s like to want to run his hands through his hair, to want to fall asleep and wake up next to him, to hold him close and just listen to him breathe.

He’s kind of always been Asahi’s, he thinks, in a way he’s never been Daichi’s or Ryuu’s. How can anyone not love Asahi? Asahi with the biggest, gentlest hands. Asahi with the voice softer than Hitoka’s, when he wants it to be. Asahi with the strongest back, and the most tender sorrows, and a chest full of locked secrets that sometimes settle in his mouth as silent words he’ll never allow to escape. Asahi with a core of steely strength forged in pain and fear greater than anything Hajime has ever known, that he would probably hardly comprehend if he did. Asahi with the smile that matches his name perfectly, the smile that Hajime wants to keep all for himself sometimes.

Hajime worries, somewhat, about if Asahi even wants him the same way. He thinks he sees signs sometimes, but he might be fooling himself, it might just be wishful thinking. He worries, a little, about what Daichi might say if he knew, about how it might affect them all, though Daichi hardly has any right to talk given how close he keeps to Ryuu these days. He worries, a lot, if it’s okay for him to be thinking like this of someone who’s been as a brother to him for years now, if it’s okay for him to wake up gasping in the night with Asahi’s dark velvet voice in his ear and Asahi’s hair brushing across his mouth.

He tries to ignore it, even though it’s carved into him so, so deeply. It works well enough for a while - he somehow manages to push it aside for months past his eighteenth birthday, well into the autumn. But then one day they’re wrestling in Crow House’s courtyard, mud smeared on their skin and across their faces, rowdy shouts from Daichi and Ryuu and Tadashi egging them on - Hajime has already beaten Daichi, and Asahi has soundly beaten Ryuu - and their feet are slipping, and their growls keep turning into laughter, and Asahi trips him up and pins him so easily, and his _hands_ , oh, his hands are so strong on Hajime’s shoulders, his hair’s come loose and the ends are tickling the back of Hajime’s neck, he’s so _close_ , he’s - the smell of him, the heat of him, the sound of his ragged breath, it’s barely a second that they stay like that but his presence is everywhere, _everywhere_ , Hajime is _drowning_ in it -

He twists in the dirt to look up at Asahi, and something of the blaze must show in his eyes because Asahi actually lets go, stepping back with a look of shock. He remains sprawled on the ground, trying to get his racing heartbeat under control as Ryuu cries victory for Asahi. Asahi is being slapped on the back by a grinning Daichi, but looking back at Hajime over his shoulder like he’s trying to decipher his expression.

Keishin calls them in for dinner with amused resignation, with a strict injunction to wash off before they step inside. So the two of them stay behind to scrub their skin under the pump and try and get the worst of it off. They step out from under the water with pink skin and wet hair in a charged silence. Hajime, glancing at Asahi out of the corner of his eyes, sees that he still has mud smudged across his cheek.

“Hey,” he says before he can stop himself. “Wait -”

Asahi pauses, tilting his head in inquiry, and the gesture is so innocently charming that Hajime has to force his hand to stay steady as he reaches out. Asahi is stock still as he wipes the mud away, his eyes widening a little, his mouth parting around the hint of an exhale.

“You had -” Hajime makes a vague gesture, smiling against the thunder of his heart in his ears.

“Oh.” There’s a faint pulse fluttering in the slope of Asahi’s throat, and every muscle in Hajime’s body is screaming for him to reach up and press his mouth to it. “Thank you.”

 _No_ , he tells himself sternly as they walk back. _Not now. Not yet._

Not now, because everyone is waiting for them, and they can be seen from any window of the house, and it is in no way the right time for either of them. He cannot tip this balance right now, no matter how much he wants to. He has to be satisfied with the way Asahi’s voice had dropped after he’d touched his cheek, with the brief flicker of something raw in his gaze when he’d taken his hand away. He has to be satisfied with knowing what he knows, and he has to wait.

⸶⸷

Asahi finally gets drunk, that autumn harvest. He gives in to Daichi and Hajime’s wheedling and drinks, and drinks, and then the two of them are faced with a barely conscious Asahi slumped on the floor. They look at each other, sigh, and hoist him up, one on each side. He’s a big person, but neither of them had ever realised exactly how much he weighed until that night. They drag him up the stairs somehow, fighting the fog of their own dizziness, and stand swaying on the landing.

“Where?” Daichi asks.

“My room,” Hajime says, groaning as Asahi’s arm bears down on his neck. “ ‘S closest.”

He catches Daichi’s expression, and scowls at him as they begin to stagger down the corridor. “His virtue’s perfectly safe with me, don’t give me that look.”

“If you say so,” Daichi grins, and Hajime makes a rude gesture at him as he slides open his room door. They dump Asahi on Hajime's futon, rolling their shoulders with matching groans.

“The next time he gets drunk,” Daichi says, “you can have him all to yourself, I refuse to be around. I need to go, Tadashi’ll be waiting for me at Makoto-san’s.”

“Bastard,” Hajime says without heat as he leaves, and Daichi gives him a wink before closing the door behind him.

Asahi mumbles something in his sleep, face smushed into the futon, and Hajime can’t help but smile, a wave of affection welling up in his chest.

“What am I going to do with you?” he says quietly, resting his palm on Asahi’s back for a moment.

Asahi doesn’t reply, of course. Hajime’s head is foggy, and he’s tired, and he doesn’t think twice before loosening his obi and curling up next to Asahi, on whatever part of the futon he can get.

⸸

Asahi wakes up with a groan in his throat and something heavy on his chest. His temples are throbbing vaguely, and his mouth is dry as hell, and his nose is itchy -

\- which, he realises, going rigid, is because Hajime’s hair is tickling it.

Hajime’s right arm is thrown over his chest, his face tucked into Asahi’s shoulder, one leg hitched over Asahi’s knee. His breath ghosts over the skin at the base of Asahi’s neck, and his rough fingertips are gently resting on his jaw. His yukata is riding up a little where his leg is bent, and Asahi stares at the morning light illuminating a wide swathe of skin on his thigh and tries to keep his breathing even.

He’s so _warm_ , and such a comforting weight in his arms, and his hair smells of that mikan peel soap his mother makes because he washed it yesterday. He wants nothing more than to stay like this until Hajime wakes up, but decides that it’s better to get the embarrassment over with quickly. If he’s lucky, Hajime will just roll over with a sleepy apology, go back to sleep and forget about it when he wakes up.

“Hajime?” he says softly.

“Mm,” Hajime mumbles, turning his face away from the light. Asahi has to close his eyes tight for a moment when his mouth brushes his collarbone.

“Hajime,” he tries again.

Hajime lifts his head, blinking the sleep out of his eyes, hair sticking up in every direction. He meets Asahi’s gaze, and smiles.

“Good morning,” he murmurs, his voice all deep and hoarse from sleep. Asahi can do nothing but stare, his heart pounding as Hajime easily slides his hand up to cup his face in his palm, as he shifts so he can rest their foreheads together as they breathe.

Asahi closes his eyes as the tips of their noses touch, a thousand questions on his tongue, unable to utter a single one.

_What are you doing? Is this what I think it is? Does this mean what I think it does? Do you want me? Do you want this? Will this last beyond this moment? Do you really want me?_

_This is really allowed?_

“Is this . . .” Hajime whispers, breath fanning across Asahi’s mouth, and it’s a little stale but he couldn’t care less right now. “Do you - you do, right?”

And the hesitance in his voice banishes every doubt crowding Asahi’s mind. He lifts a hand to Hajime’s hip, squeezing gently, and his heart soars at the way Hajime’s fingers tremble against his skin, just for a moment.

“Yes,” he breathes, “I do,” and Hajime’s eyes light up.

And that’s all that needs to be said, really.

Hajime’s mother calls for them to wake up, to get ready and go to work, so they do. It could have been a normal day if not for the glow still in Hajime’s eyes, the glow so similar to the one from the day Asahi had lifted him onto the wall; if not for the way the back of Asahi’s neck still prickles when he thinks of what it had felt like to have Hajime’s chest pressed to his; if not for the way their gazes catch and hold for a sparkling second longer than usual.

Hajime walks him home, and it’s still like any other day. Then they reach the old maple tree in the meadow where they have all their races, the halfway point on the path, and Hajime grabs his hand, and tugs him into its shade and steps close -

\- and then Hajime’s hands are in his hair, and his arms are around Hajime’s waist, and they kiss each other like they’ve been doing it all their lives, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. They kiss, and they kiss, and they kiss, and Asahi cannot believe it’s taken them this long to get here. To do this.

The sun is going down and Ukai-jiisan will scold him for being late, and the bark of the tree is probably going to catch in the folds of Hajime’s hakama, but Hajime’s back is so strong under his palms and his mouth is so warm and he’s holding him so close and - and even the call of the ocean has gone silent in his chest, for the first time since he’s stepped on land. It feels like a betrayal, almost, but in this happiness, this twilight-drenched and mikan-spiced happiness, he cannot bring himself to care.


	4. warmth, murmurs, love

Hajime likes rain, especially the storms. He shouts back into the wind, he laughs at the lightning, he stands and allows the rain to drench him with the wildest grin Asahi’s ever seen. Asahi, sitting on the shaded veranda, watches him, and wonders why. What is it that makes him so exhilarated? It’s loud, and cold, and wet, and Hajime is only one small, small person on the dark, howling hillside.

“Asahi!” Hajime is still grinning, standing in front of him, dripping hand outstretched. “You’re not scared anymore, are you?”

He hasn’t been scared of storms for years now, no, but that doesn’t mean he particularly enjoys them.

“No, but I’m still not coming,” Asahi replies.

“Just once, just try it! Come on -”

Hajime ducks down to kiss him hard, swift and impulsive, and it’s still new enough that Asahi is reeling slightly when they break apart.

“Come on,” Hajime laughs against his mouth, and he can’t resist.

He lets Hajime pull him out from the veranda and stands with his face tilted up to the rain, feeling his clothes get soaked. Hajime dances opposite him, arms outstretched, smiling at the sky like he wants to hug the thunderclouds.

Asahi can understand it a little better when he’s standing in it, though he still can’t describe it, but - there’s a rush of adrenaline to standing in the cold, to bearing the lash of the wind, to hearing your own voice get whipped away into nothing, knowing you can’t do a thing about it, and reveling in the fact.

He watches Hajime dance for some time, blinking water out of his eyes and laughing when he loses his footing. He’s beautiful, fearless, hair plastered down over his forehead and bright elation in his eyes, knowing that Asahi is watching him and not caring in the least. This is his secret joy, and he’s given it to Asahi without a single qualm.

Asahi, taking his hand once more, wonders if there is anywhere he would not go, anything he would not do if Hajime was the one leading him there, and decides that there probably isn’t. They stay in the storm for an hour more, laughing and dancing and kissing as their hands slip off each other’s skin. They catch colds, of course, but neither Saeko-san’s scolds nor Ukai-jiisan’s grumbling bring them to regret it.

⸶⸷

“Hey,” Hajime pants, stepping out into the night air and wiping his hands hastily on a rag. “Did you -?”

“I told him,” Asahi says, smiling reassuringly. “He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“Okay. Okay, good, because it’s the harvest, and goddamn _everyone_ is here tonight -” Asahi grasps his shoulder tight, and Hajime exhales, forcing himself to relax a little. “Yes, I know. I’m fine. It'll be fine.”

“It will. Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?”

“No, no, you have to go all the way back. It’ll be late. Ryuu is enough, and we have Makoto-san with us as well if we need more help.”

“All right then.” The look Asahi gives him is searching. “Haji -”

“Yeah?”

“She’ll be fine. I know you’re worried, but she’ll be fine.”

Hajime looks at him for a moment, then steps forward to hug him, tight. “Thank you.”

Asahi kisses the top of his head briefly. “The whole village would riot if anything happened to Iwaizumi-san,” he says as he steps back. “Where would all the old men drink every night?”

Hajime laughs a little, slinging the rag over his shoulder. “That’s true. I’ll see you at the forge tomorrow, yes?”

“Don’t push yourself. Saeko-san knows your duty to your home comes first.”

“I - yeah. All right. Then -”

“I’ll come by in the evening.” Asahi smiles his warm, sunrise smile, and flicks his cheek with one finger before stepping away. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Hajime calls after him, affection curling in his chest. “What would I do without you!”

Asahi’s laugh is all he hears as he vanishes up the village path.

⸶⸷

“Ah, sorry, sorry -”

“It’s fine, I probably shouldn’t have -”

“No, but -”

“What if we . . . ”

“Like this?”

“Maybe if we - yeah, like -

“ _Ouch_ -”

“Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean to -”

There’s silence as limbs are disentangled, broken by the rustling of clothes being pulled back on. Both of them avoid each other’s eyes, embarrassed.

“Do you,” Hajime says eventually, tentatively, “want to maybe just go for a walk or something?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Asahi says firmly. “Yes, please.”

⸶⸷

“Will you just _listen_ to me, you - you mule!”

Hajime scowls.“I _am_ listening -”

“No, you’re not, you’re -” Asahi breaks off to take a breath, putting his face in his hands. Hajime doesn’t say anything either, and there's a long moment of angry silence.

“I . . . '' Asahi says, looking up, “I need to hear things said. Out loud. Okay? I need _words_ , and I need them to be clear. It’s - I’m sorry if it’s a hassle, or if it’s annoying, I don’t mean to be demanding, but - Hajime, it’s hard for me to know, sometimes, what I said that wasn’t right or what I shouldn’t have done. And when you get irritated - truly irritated, not the kind of irritated Daichi makes you - you tend to close off and keep quiet until it passes. But that just makes me apprehensive, not knowing what I’ve done wrong and you refusing to talk about it. I can’t guess, I don’t _want_ to be guessing in that kind of situation. Just _tell_ me, even if you feel like it’s silly or trivial. I want to know, I want to make it better, I want us to be able to talk about it. And I can take hearing it, I’m not that - that delicate or weak-hearted. Okay?”

Hajime looks at him, and holds out a tentative hand. Asahi takes it with a sigh, and Hajime sits frowning at their clasped hands for a minute.

“Okay,” he says finally. “But you have to realize - it’s hard for me to put things into words, sometimes, especially if I’m angry or upset. I might say it wrong, I might say it badly. Just - just give me some slack when I’m trying to explain.”

“That’s fine. I’ll remember.”

“And if you want me to explain - I might not realize I haven’t, so you might have to tell me. Just say something like - I don’t know, like - ‘I need you to say more’, or ‘I haven’t got it yet’ or something.”

“Okay.” Asahi shifts their hands to his lap as he closes his eyes and leans against Hajime’s shoulder. “Okay.”

“Asahi -”

“Mm?”

“Am I really as bad as a mule?”

“Oh -” Asahi looks up, the urge to laugh warring against the lurch in his heart at how small Hajime’s voice is. “I’m sorry I said that, I just - you, um, you _can_ be stubborn, but -”

Hajime snorts, the corner of his mouth twitching up just a little. “Just say it straight, idiot, like you were telling me to do a minute ago.”

“I - then -” Ashai winces. “Then - yes? But only sometimes! Um -”

Hajime actually chuckles. “I’ll try not to be, sweetheart,” he says, and Asahi colours to the roots of his hair.

“You just - you can’t just say stuff like - Hajime!”

“Stop being a cute dumbass, and I will.”

“ _Hajime!_ ”

⸶⸷

The light is still blue-grey. Dawn hasn’t arrived yet. Asahi is a silhouette against the paper screen over the window, hugging his knees to his chest. His head is resting on his folded arms, his hair is tumbling down over his smooth, bare back. Hajime, blinking sleep from his eyes, can hardly see him breathing. He can hear the distant crash of the surf, and faint cries of seagulls, and the low whistle of the wind. Everything is still and quiet, washed out and muted.

“Asahi?” he murmurs, sitting up and reaching out to smooth one palm up his spine. “You’re awake early.”

Asahi doesn’t answer. Hajime shifts closer and softly kisses a mark on his neck from last night. “You all right?”

Asahi nods slightly, still facing away from him. Hajime lays his cheek against his back, tucks an arm around his waist, and waits.

He turns, eventually, when the light has become tinged with gold and orange, and his eyes are full of unshed tears. Hajime, pulling him gently into his chest, thinks he must be the quietest crier he’s ever known.

“Is it the waves?” he says into the top of his head, and Asahi nods, fingers curled tight against his hip. Hajime holds him, and waits for it to pass. It’s all he can do, when these bouts occur - it took him some time to accept it, but he can only hold him, and kiss his forehead, and wait. He will never know anything more about this than the fact that it has to do with the waves. Asahi will never, ever tell him.

He will never tell anyone.

So he keeps his suspicions to himself, because they don’t matter. He doesn't need to know if Asahi doesn’t want him to, and he certainly doesn’t need to know to satisfy his own curiosity. He hates that it causes an episode of tears once every few months, but they’re lucky that that’s all it does, given how deep it runs. If all he has to do is hold Asahi like this for a couple hours and not ask questions, he will do it without complaint.

“What would I do without you,” Asahi mumbles into his collarbones, sniffling a little.

“Cry alone,” Hajime says quietly, running his fingers through his hair. “And come out with a smile like it had never happened.”

“You overestimate me.”

It’s said softly, almost derisively. Hajime closes his eyes against the image of Asahi crying alone in a dark corner of his room, against the prickle of tears in his own eyes at the thought.

“I don’t think I do.” He shifts so they’re lying down, Asahi’s head resting on his chest, and sighs softly. “But I’m - I’m glad I’m here, either way.”

Asahi briefly presses his mouth to the center of his chest, and Hajime strokes his shoulder soothingly, and waits.

He can stay as long as he’s needed.

⸶⸷

“You should be smarter by now,” Hajime says, mildly exasperated as he unrolls the length of bandage. “Four years in the forge and you still burn yourself like this? Saeko-san doesn’t even wear gloves, and she hasn’t gotten a new scar since I don’t even know how long.”

Asahi gives him that look of his, all pleading and apologetic (and faintly teasing, if Hajime looks close enough). “She’s been doing it for so much longer than us, you can’t expect me to -”

“I can and I do,” Hajime says shortly, struggling to hide a quivering lip and knowing he’s failed when Asahi’s eyes begin to dance. “At least you seem to be able to bear it pretty well. Shut up and lie down. Knees bent, feet on the floor.”

Asahi obeys, tugging his hair out of the tight bun he keeps it in while working to lay back against the tatami, watching Hajime soak a strip of bandage in salve through his eyelashes. Hajime squeezes the cloth out and pushes up the hem of the left leg of Asahi’s hakama, exposing an angry burn on his calf to the air, and begins to wrap it up.

Asahi is quiet as he does so, only reaching out a hand when Hajime has tugged it tight into place. Hajime takes it in his own, kisses his knuckles, his fingertips, and smiles when Asahi squeezes back.

“I knew you weren’t really annoyed,” Asahi murmurs, reaching up to brush against Hajime’s cheek.

Hajime hugs his calf and rests his chin on his knee, careful not to touch the bandage. “You should,” he says as softly, pressing his mouth gently against the side of his knee for a long moment, the smell of burnt cloth strong in his nose.

“Should I so?” Asahi’s fingers run through his hair, soothing and familiar.

“I can never stay angry at you,” Hajiime says, sounding singularly indulgent even to his own ears. “You know that. Not even when you hurt yourself like a careless idiot, because you give me this stupid sad look, and -”

Asahi pouts, his lower lip trembling, his lovely, liquid eyes suddenly heartbreaking. “This look?”

Hajime laughs, digging his chin into the side of his thigh. “Stop it, dumbass - yes, it’s exactly that look, stop!”

Asahi chuckles, low and rich, and his fingertips skin Hajime’s jawline. Hajime catches his wrist and holds his hand still, turning so his cheek fits into his palm. They stay like that for a quiet moment, their breath the loudest thing in the room. Hajime nudges the hakama further back so it falls and pools at Asahi’s hip to expose his left thigh, and closes his eyes, and lowers his mouth once more. He can feel the slight tension in Asahi’s fingers as he slowly kisses lower, he hears the brief hitch in his breath before it comes back just a little harsher. He pauses halfway down and looks up to meet Asahi’s gaze, and he’s smiling faintly but his eyes are dark and sharp.

Hajime pushes his nose further into the warmth of his skin, and is briefly debating whether a soft bite would be a good move when there’s a knock on the frame of the door.

“Asa-nii?” a voice calls. It’s wavering, clearly on the verge of tears, and Hajime jumps back as Asahi sits up quickly. He tugs his hakama down, calling back, “Come in, Tadashi,” and Tadashi slides the door back. His eyes and nose are red.

“Oh,” he says, when he sees Hajime. “Did I - I didn’t mean to -”

“It’s fine,” Asahi says gently, beckoning for him to come in. “What is it?”

Tadashi limps to his side, and when he sits it’s nearly a collapse. Asahi reaches out to hold his shoulders with one arm, supporting him as he slumps, and motions for Hajime to leave with a brief nod. Hajime gets to his feet with alacrity, despite the disappointment at having his moment with Asahi cut short. Concerned pity wells up in him as Tadashi buries his face in Asahi’s chest, but this is neither the time nor the place for him to know what’s happened.

“I’ll see you at the forge tomorrow,” he says quietly, and Asahi smiles in acknowledgement. Hajime squeezes Tadashi’s shoulder, and his response is a soft sob.

“Asa-nii, I -” he mumbles, muffled and so, so sad as Hajime walks out of the room. “I was at the beach, and Dai-nii was coming in the boat, and I saw - I didn’t know, I -”

Hajime slides the door shut behind him, and Tadashi’s voice fades. He huffs softly and makes his way down the corridor, wondering what on earth could have happened to make the boy this upset.

He catches sight of Daichi just then through the window, coming back with the fishing nets bundled on his shoulder and Ryuu by his side chattering energetically. Daichi laughs his full-bodied laugh, teeth flashing white in the twilight, and Hajime frowns, even more puzzled - so neither of them know what kind of state Tadashi is in?

He reaches out to open the window, about to call out and demand if Daichi had seen Tadashi at the beach, when Ryuu rocks up onto the balls of his feet to press a quick, almost shy kiss to Daichi’s temple. Daichi smiles so, so wide, his eyes crinkling at the corners in the way they do only when he’s really happy, and pinches Ryuu’s cheek gently in return.

Hajime’s hand drops in shocked surprise. _Oh, so they’re finally . . ._

They’re good for each other, Daichi and Ryuu - both strong, both good-natured, both deeply, selflessly kind. No one can keep Ryuu in check when he gets too loud like Daichi, and no one can spark eager competition in Daichi’s eyes like Ryuu. He’s glad for them, he truly, truly is.

But his heart still aches for Tadashi, so he leans out of the window and shouts, ‘At least keep it indoors, the two of you!” They jump, whipping around to face him with identical scarlet faces, and Daichi glowers at him.

Hajime hears footsteps behind him, and looks over his shoulder to see Keishin coming down the corridor. “Yo, Kei-nii!” he grins. “Guess what I just saw - “

“Hajime!” Daichi roars, and there’s a soft thud as the nets are dropped and he lunges for the window. “Don’t you _dare_ -”

Hajime scrambles for an escape, laughing as Daichi gives chase and Keishin yells at him for dropping the nets. Ryuu has his face buried in his hands, still standing outside.

Knowing Asahi, he’s probably already soothed Tadashi enough that he’ll be able to meet Daichi at dinner with at least the appearance of complaisance, and he’ll most likely sit with him through dinner, and keep him company for as long as he needs. Hitoka will help too, once she knows. Tadashi will hurt, but he’ll be fine eventually. He knows Asahi will make sure of it.

And in the meantime -

“Ojiisan! Listen, don’t let Ryuu stay over anymore -”

“Hajime, I’ll _kill_ you -”

“ - never know what they might get up to in the middle of the night -”

“ - rip your lungs out and feed them to the fucking crows, I swear to all the gods -”

“ _Language,_ brat, or you’ll be scrubbing all our laundry for a week!”

⸶⸷

“Like this?”

“Ah, yeah - yeah, that’s -” There’s an intake of breath. “That’s good, yes.”

“Do you want me to - here?”

Hajime’s neck arches, a desperate sound catching in his throat. “Good?” Asahi murmurs into his skin, soft and husky, and he nods frantically.

“Yes, yeah, it’s - ah - Asa -”

Asahi grins down at him, looking far too pleased with himself. Hajime scowls and manages to snap, “Don’t give me that look, pay more attention to what you’re doing -”

Asahi does something with his fingers that has him slapping one hand to his mouth to keep himself quiet and scrabbling for something to hold on to with the other.

“I think I’m doing quite well,” he says, and his voice, gods, his _voice_. “This is fun, I see why you enjoyed yourself so much last time.”

“When you’re - done, I’m going to - you’re going to regret ever - ever - _Asahi, god -_ ”

“I’ll look forward to it,” he says, kissing his cheek gently. “But until then -”

“Fuck, Asahi, don’t, _don’t_ \- nng _-_ !”

Asahi laughs into his neck, and fervently kisses the cries from his mouth, and leaves him with his head spinning so badly that all he has left anchoring him to reality is Asahi’s face, his voice, the smell of his skin, all he can see and hear and touch is - Asahi.

⸶⸷

It’s a lovely day. There’s still heat lingering in the air from the tail end of summer, but there’s a pleasant chill in the breeze that’s trying to toss Asahi’s hair away from his face. The bark of the maple tree he’s leaning against - their maple tree, their kissing tree - is warm and a little rough against his back. Their day at the forge had ended early, with only some jewelry to finish up for the wife of the shogun, and they’d come up here to the flower meadow to sit together until dark. Hajime is a warm weight in his arms, curled against his chest in contentment, and the smell of his hair is almost enough to drown out the salt in the breeze that’s burning his nose.

Hajime isn’t like this too often, quiet and soft and yielding as Asahi pulls him along by the hand, as he settles him down, as he holds him close and listens to him breathe. It feels good, like his ovelarge body is of some use if it can hold Hajime’s sturdy frame like this, if his large hands can smooth gently over his hip and cradle his head against his shoulder so perfectly. He cherishes the quiet they can share together like this, just the two of them in their own tiny corner of the world.

“Sleeping?” he murmurs. Hajime shifts a little, nuzzling further into his chest with an undecipherable mumble. Asahi chuckles, and feels Hajime smile at the vibration of it.

“Not sleepin’ yet,” he says, as sleepy as Asahi has ever heard him, and he can’t help pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

“You can, if you want.”

“Mm, you’re too comfortable. S’not fair.”

Asahi says nothing, and Hajime settles against him a little more with a wide yawn, one arm tensing briefly around Asahi’s waist. The sun is getting lower, the flowers are dancing, the evening birds are calling, and this is the most content he’s been in days.

Hajime stirs after a little while, when pink is starting to wash over the two of them. “Asa?”

He has to smile - that name only slips out when Hajime is feeling particularly tender, or particularly tired. “Mhm?”

“Wanted to ask you somethin’.”

“Sure, sweetheart, what is it?”

Hajime lifts his head, smiling a little at the endearment. “Probably a stupid question, I think, but I just wanted to know . . .”

“Tell me.”

“Could you . . . do you think you could ever love Daichi the way you do me?”

Asahi blinks at him, frowning slightly. “Hajime, what -”

“I mean . . . I don’t know what I mean, just - if I hadn’t existed, if you had never known me . . . could you have loved him like you love me?” Hajime’s eyes are mostly clear of sleep, now, and steady as they meet Asahi’s gaze.

“Why are you asking me this?” Asahi says softly. “Did I do something, say something to make you think -”

“No, dumbass, of course not. Just -” He shrugs a little. “We’ve always heard that we’re alike, me and Daichi. Same height, same hair, same attitude towards a lot of things, we even sound the same when we yell. I’ve got a quicker temper, I guess, but that’s about it. So I was just wondering.”

“You two have more differences than that.”

“More similarities than differences, though.”

Asahi lapses into silence, turning the question over in his mind. “I think,” he says slowly, “if . . . this is a world where you don’t exist, right?”

“Right.”

“I . . . to be completely honest, I can imagine it. Daichi has qualities in him that I love, and for that love to change from something brotherly to what I feel for you - I don’t know how that could ever happen, but I can imagine it. I can imagine how it would feel. But -” He tilts his head back, looking at the sky. “I don’t think me, as I am now, could love him like that. If I was the same person in that world where you weren’t there, I still don’t think he could take your place. I would have to be different, feel different, and I think perhaps he would too, for us to be - for us to be this. For us to be what I am with you.”

“Yeah?” Hajime says quietly, and there’s a faint smile in his voice. “I see.”

“It feels strange talking about him like this, though,” Asahi says, wrinkling his nose a little, and he looks down as Hajime laughs.

“Kinda, yeah. Sorry.” He leans up to kiss Asahi’s cheek, and rests his head back against his shoulder. “Thank you for answering so honestly.”

“Mm. And what about you? Who would you have loved if I hadn’t shown up?”

“That’s . . . I don’t know, really. _Maybe_ Daichi, I don’t know, but I think most likely I’d end up a grumpy old man like Ukai-jiisan, running the forge after Saeko-san.”

“What a sad fate,” Asahi says, laughing a little.

“It is, isn’t it.” Hajime’s fingers twine with his and clasp them tight. “So it’s a good thing you did show up as you did.”

Asahi presses his mouth to his temple, closes his eyes tight, and breathes as a dull, bittersweet pang shoots through his heart. _A good thing I showed up as I did?_

But Hajime doesn’t know, Hajime will never know. And he’s lost more than he can bear, but Hajime makes up for so much of it.

So much.

“I love you too,” he whispers, replying to what Hajime had really meant, and they sit quietly together as the sunset sweeps over them.


	5. offering, misstep, fury

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here goes  
> all i have to say is rip iwa

Years pass, slowly but steadily. Asahi and Hajime settle together, grow together, and learn more about each other than they ever thought they would. Asahi always runs hot and is never cold in the winters, whereas Hajime never fails to catch cold in the last week of autumn. Asahi is conscious of his body, slouching in crowded places and keeping his limbs tucked close around people shorter than him (which is most people), but he stands tall and lies down with his limbs sprawled out lazily when there’s enough space, when he lets himself relax. Hajime is so comfortable in his body that he is never conscious of it, always moving as he should and never noticing that he does, never noticing how a room changes when he walks in. Asahi has for his five siblings and his adopted grandfather the same deep affection Hajime has for his mother. Asahi laughs rarely, shouts rarely, and smiles often. Hajime shouts more often than anything else, but finds himself smiling more and more in Asahi’s company.

They are both fair, with a strong sense of how things ought to be. They are both hardworking, with a sense of firm responsibility for the work they take on. They are both empathetic. Asahi draws feeling out with gentle words and encouraging smiles, Hajime draws feeling out with blunt questions and disarming grins. They are both giving. Asahi gives, and gives, and worries that his big heart isn’t giving enough. Hajime cares, and watches, and will do everything Asahi needs without saying a single word about it.

They both could watch the clouds or listen to the wind for hours on end, and sometimes do, when Saeko-san lets them off early and they have the time. They both cook, and make each other their favourite meals often enough that Tadashi and Ryuu incessantly pester them to cook for them as well - they give in sometimes, and unceremoniously kick them out of the kitchen otherwise. Asahi sleeps at the Iwaizumi house more often than not, and their clothes become so difficult to tell apart that they no longer bother trying after a few months. 

Hajime gives him a corded bracelet with a tiny mule pendant on their first anniversary. It’s a flower after that, for Hitoka, and a mountain for Daichi and Tadashi, and a crow for the Ukais, all intricately done in silvered steel. Asahi does not know what to give him, and decides that on this one night of the year he will overcome his reluctance and sing for Hajime, who adores his singing voice. He sings sailing songs, farming songs, war songs, love ballads, and Hajime lies in his lap and listens far into the night.

They are both very, very much in love, with each other, with their families, with the world, with their lives. One of them thinks he could want for nothing more. The other knows he cannot ask for anything more than he has. 

And they are happy.

⸶⸷

Hajime scoops cold water out of the water barrel and into a bucket, soaking the piled up dirty dishes, and shakes his hands out. It’s a cold autumn night, the stars ice-sharp in the dark sky. He pushes a plate further under the water now coated with a film of oil, and is hefting it onto his hip when he sees two familiar figures making their way down the street.

“Yacchan!” he calls, setting the bucket down and going to the fence. “Tadashi!”

They look around, identical smiles appearing on their faces when they see him. Hitoka has her arm around Tadashi’s waist, and he has his around her shoulders. Hajime can see her taking some of his weight as they come to the other side of the fence.

“Hi, Haji-nii,” Hitoka says, her cheeks flushed from the chill. “Busy working?

“Yeah, it’s not been a slow night so far,” he says. “Ma needed me as well as Dai. You okay there, Tadashi?”

“Me? Of course, why?”

“Oh, just -” Hajime gestures with his chin. “If you need help -”

“Oh, no,” Tadashi laughs. “I don’t really need it, but it’s always easier to walk with some help. Besides, Hitoka was cold, so . . .”

“Ah, right.” Hajime notices that Hitoka’s cheeks are going a darker red, and raises an eyebrow at her. She shakes her head and looks away, still blushing. “Uh, how was it at Makoto-san’s today?”

“Good! It was good, we have some new clients, and they like our work so far. Makoto-san found some nice wood for me, too, and I have a new design for my leg I want to try out. I think it’ll be much better than this one.”

“Sounds good. And you, Yacchan? Shogun’s daughter asked you to compose poetry for her lover yet?”

Tadashi chuckles, and Hitoka bursts into laughing protest. “I’m just a scribe,” she smiles. “I’m not a poet, or a writer.”

“I know Ukai-jiisan wouldn’t say that,” Hajime says, and Tadashi hums agreement.

Hitoka makes a face at them both. “Work is work,” she says, “even if I am fairly well known now. And the day people call me poet, I’ll buy all of you enough silk to dress you for a lifetime.”

“So that will be what,” Hajime says, grinning, “in half a year? We have something to look forward to, Tadashi.”

“You’re richer than all of us put together anyway,” Tadashi laughs, poking her cheek lightly. “You might as well spend it on us!”

“Nonsense,” Hitoka says, rolling her eyes. “Let’s go, it’s getting late.”

“Get back safe, you two.”

“You say that every time, Haji-nii. Nothing is going to happen to us between here and there.”

“What if it does?”

“Well -”

“I’ll protect us,” Tadashi grins, like it’s the obvious answer. “Don’t worry about us, Haji-nii. We’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t work too hard, okay?”

Hitoka’s mouth quirks up, and her eyes are suddenly much softer than before. Hajime reaches out to ruffle Tadashi’s hair, and flicks her nose with a quizzical look before they leave. “Yeah, yeah. Good night.”

“Good night!” Tadashi calls back, waving to him. Hitoka waves as well, her cheeks pink again. Hajime picks up the bucket and heads back inside as they recede down the road, wondering if he needs to ask Hitoka some pointed questions about where her heart might lie. Daichi meets him in the kitchen, fanning his face as sweat slides down from his temple.

“Everything fine?” Hajime asks, and Daichi shrugs.

“Nothing’s broken, everyone has food, everyone has sake, so it’s fine for now. I need to step outside for a minute, it’s too goddamn hot in here. Keep an eye on the table with the traders, that corner, they might be wanting more drinks soon.”

“Right. Ma?”

“She’s cooking. I’ll serve it when I come back, she’ll be a little while.”

“Got it.”

‘“Also -” Daichi grabs his arm, stopping him from going to the dining area.

“What?”

“It’s going to be six years next week, huh?” Daichi says, smiling. “Planned anything?”

“Not yet,” Hajime laughs, “but I will. What did you do for yours and Ryuu’s fifth?”

“I would tell you,” Daichi says, with a wicked look, “but it might be too scandalizing for your ears -”

Hajime groans, pushing away from him and grabbing a bottle of sake. “I don’t need to hear that, ugh.”

Daichi’s laughter fades behind him as he ducks under the curtain to step between noisy tables. The lanterns are burning a little low, there’s a slight haze to the air - he makes a mental note to switch them out after this round - and raucous bursts of laughter erupt here and there. The loudest are the group of six or seven traders, a couple from other villages but most returned home after months of traveling. Hajime makes his way around the room, providing refills and taking orders for more food, and ends at their table.

“Anything you need, sirs? Anything I can get you?”

“Hey, boy,” one of them hiccups, waving his cup in the air. “Fill this up for me, would ya?”

“Of course, sir,” he says, kneeling to pour. “Anything else?”

“Eh, we already told the other boy a minute ago,” someone else says dismissively. “Just fill our cups, and we’ll be fine.”

“Yes, sir.”

He steps around them, leaning in between to tip the sake into their cups, and their attention drifts back to a wiry man with a long beard and narrow, laughing eyes. Hajime knows him by sight and by name, but has never exchanged words with him before.

“Go on then, Sakamoto,” a big trader roars at him. “Finish what you were saying! Never heard a greater pack of rubbish in my life!”

“It isn’t,” Sakamoto protests. “I know the lady who sold it to me, she’s as straight as daylight. It’s an honest to gods selkie skin!”

There’s a collective groan of derision from the table, and Hajime has to steady one of the empty bottles of sake that’s nearly unbalanced by the big one slapping his hand down.

“She lied,” he shouts. “Selkie skins are tremendous luck, why’d she choose to part with it, eh? And to you, of all people!”

“Her luck was finding a gullible fool like him!” someone else says, and they all burst into laughter. Sakamoto waves it away, reaching for his pack.

“Listen,” he says, “even if it’s not a selkie skin, it’s pretty as hell! Right? And I believe it’ll bring me luck. Just look at this beauty, can you imagine the seal this belonged to?”

He pulls it out, and there’s a reluctant murmur of appreciation. Hajime’s curiosity is piqued, and when he leans around the big man to see it, he nearly drops the half empty bottle he’s holding. It’s a lovely thing, a rich, reddish chestnut brown fur cloak, almost a cape, and it looks softer than anything he’s ever seen. But that’s not why it hits him like a punch to the stomach, it's not its beauty that does it. It’s because everything about it, the colour, the texture, every strand of it, even the faintly musty smell he can catch over the fumes of alcohol - all of it is screaming Asahi to him. It’s calling to him, the one who knows Asahi the best of them all - the one who knows his eyes and his hair and his breath and his pulse and his warmth better than anyone, anyone else. The skin calls to him like Asahi’s smile, and he finds that he suddenly cannot breathe.

“ ‘Scuse me,” he mutters, back away from the table clumsily. “ ‘Scuse me, sirs -”

He makes it to the kitchen, manages to send Daichi back in, and bursts out of the house, gasping in the night air. He takes one deep breath, then two, and puts his head in one hand, trying to think.

Selkie. It’s - it’s crossed his mind before now -

_Pretty eyes, liquidy, like a seal - the world he belongs to is not the one he inhabits now - he hates the ocean, can’t bear to be near it, cries when it gets to be too much - came out of nowhere, nowhere, we all thought it was the war but he knew almost nothing about how to eat, bathe, pray, speak, dress -_

\- and he’d dismissed it. But - out of everything otherworldly that Asahi could possibly be, selkie doesn’t seem too farfetched. And with the skin . . . with the skin, it’s almost certain, isn’t it?

Hajime pinches the bridge of his nose with a long exhale. _So what do I do?_

If he’s wrong - well. The embarrassment would be acute, Asahi might even be upset with him for some time, but it isn’t the worst thing that could happen. 

If he’s right, then . . . well, the stories say a selkie will leave and never come back if they find their skin after losing it once on land. That, he knows Asahi will not do. He knows Asahi will not simply grab it and sprint to the ocean without a second glance. He has his family, and he has his love. He would not run like that.

Will he take it, then? If it is a case where, if he takes it, he must leave and never return, would he do so? Hajime, turning it over in his mind, cannot bring himself to believe that he would. He might not reject the skin outright, but neither would he simply leave. He doesn’t think Asahi would do anything without trying to work out some kind of a compromise, without trying to keep at least some part of the life he’s built for himself over ten years. Without trying to keep Hajime, at the very least.

And there’s no question of simply not telling him, of forgetting he ever saw the skin. He would ever be able to forgive himself if he did that, if he brushed aside something that would mean so much to him out of selfish anxiety. He would never again consider himself worthy of any part of Asahi’s love.

“Okay,” he mutters to himself, and tilts his head up to look at the sky with a long breath. “Okay.”

He has work to do if he wants to get Asahi the skin in time for their anniversary.

⸶⸷

“Here,” Hajime says, handing Asahi a steaming box. “It’s hot, be careful.”

“Thank you,” Asahi says, smiling as he takes it. Hajime brushes his cheek with the back of his knuckles, smiling back, and sits next to him with his own food. It’s a beautiful night. The moon is full, hanging low in the clear sky as it peeks through the branches of their maple tree. Winter is around the corner, so most of the flowers in the meadow are gone, but the grass is tall and silvered, whispering as it bends in the breeze.

Hajime rests his cheek against Asahi’s shoulder, soaking in his warmth, and Asahi indulgently tucks him against his chest with one strong arm, though it means he has to balance his food on his knees. They eat slowly, taking their time, speaking quietly and laughing softly as they tease each other. Asahi’s fingers lightly trace Hajime’s wrist and palm and forearm as the stars turn slowly in the sky, over and over again, and the fact that he doesn’t even realise he’s doing it makes it all the more intimate.

“This is a good way to mark our sixth year,” Asahi says, setting his empty box aside with a sigh of contentment.

Hajime settles against his chest, closing his eyes as he listens to his heartbeat. “Six years,” he says. “It went by so fast.”

“It did.” Asahi gently tips his face up for the tenth time that night, and presses his smile to the corner of Hajime’s mouth. “Here’s hoping for six more.”

“Only six?” Hajime murmurs, kissing him back, swallowing his answer. Asahi’s palm settles on his face, holding him in place as he turns the kiss slow and tender, and Hajime chases his mouth without thinking when he pulls away. Asahi grins at him, kissing the tip of his nose.

“As many as you want, sweetheart,” he says.

“And how many do _you_ want?”

“As many as I can get.”

“Dumbass,” Hajime chuckles.

“Your dumbass, unfortunately,” Asahi replies.

“Debatable. I count myself extremely fortunate.”

“There shouldn’t be any debate whatsoever about that, you’d better!”

Hajime laughs at him, reaching for his bag. “There isn’t, there isn’t.”

Asahi rests his chin on his shoulder, looking over it with interest. “What charm is it this year?”

Hajime digs around for the charm, a little nervousness beginning to make its presence felt. “Well - ah, here.” He pulls out the small, gleaming thing - it’s a dragon, the legs and tail attached to the body with fine chain so it looks like it’s moving even when it’s still.

“Oh, it’s beautiful,” Asahi says delightedly, holding out his right wrist. “How long did it take you?”

“The main pieces weren’t too bad,” Hajime says, fastening it with care. “It was the chains that were a pain. Here.”

Asahi holds it up, watching it flash in the light with his loveliest smile. “This is for Ryuu?”

“And Saeko-san,” Hajime says, unable to resist kissing his cheek softly. “We both know she's the real dragon, of the two of them.”

“She is,” Asahi laughs, and tightens his arm around Hajime’s waist. “Thank you.”

“There’s also -” Hajime breaks off, his nerve faltering, but Asahi gives him an enquiring look, that smile still on his lips, and he manages to scrape together enough courage to say, “There’s something else, um, I thought you’d - you’d like . . .”

“If you chose it, I’m sure I - “

Asahi stops talking, the light in his eyes dying like a snuffed candle as Hajime pulls the heavy skin out of his bag. Hajime hears his heart begin to beat much faster before he shifts away from him a little, still staring at the skin.

There’s silence for a long, long moment before he meets Hajime’s gaze, and - Hajime’s heart drops like a stone. That look does not bode well for either of them.

“Explain,” Asahi says, low and hard. His hands are shaking, just a little.

Hajime takes a deep breath. _Remember what you told yourself. Remember how you want to tell him, how you want this conversation to go._

“You’re not - human, are you, Asahi?”

There’s a flicker of shock in his eyes, gone as soon as Hajime sees it. “And why do you say that?”

Hajime shrugs slightly. “A hundred tiny things. I can’t possibly list half of them. But both Daichi and I noticed it, years ago, and -”

“So Daichi knows too?” Asahi says quietly.

“We guessed, but - Asahi, we never thought of asking you about it, because - well, what if we were wrong? And it didn’t matter to us. You’re you, you’re family, and nothing else mattered. But a few nights ago, Sakamoto-san was showing this to his comrades in the tavern, and as soon as I saw it I knew it was yours. I can’t explain how, but it would have been the same if I’d seen your yukata or a lock of your hair. I just knew. So . . . “

“So you’re the reason Sakamoto-san has been talking in the village about his prized skin being stolen.”

“I - yes. I stole it. I thought I could put it back as easily as I’d taken it, if I was wrong. But - am I wrong?” Hajime smiles, trying to disarm him. “Isn’t it yours?”

“Gods -” Asahi runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “What do you expect me to do now? Do you realise the position you’ve put me in, Hajime? How do I - fuck -”

He’s sitting much further away, now, biting his lip hard, and the anxiety redoubles in Hajime’s chest.

“Asa, listen.” He reaches out to place a hand on his knee. “I know you wouldn’t leave us just like that, like the stories say. I know you wouldn’t leave your family like that. It’s just that, once I saw it, I couldn’t _not_ give it to you. I had to at least tell you it was here, within reach. I - I was fairly scared about the whole ‘if selkies leave they never come back’ thing, to be totally honest, but it’s - it’s you. So I knew -”

“You knew?” Asahi says, and his voice is shaking now, too. His eyes are blazing. “You knew what? You knew I’d stay because, what, because this village is my whole world? Do you know how much of my life on land has been utter, utter torment, with my true home so close and yet so unreachable? You should know, _you_ should know, Hajime! I spent so many nights crying in your arms, for fuck’s sake! Crow House is a home, yes, and all of you are a family, but not _mine_ , not the family I was born into, not the one I was raised in. This is _not my home_ , do you not realise that?” 

It couldn’t have been worse if Asahi had slapped him. Hajime’s stomach churns horribly, and he has to swallow back sudden, rising tears as hurt floods through him.

“Not your home?” he manages to say. “Not your family? If Daichi heard - if Ukai-jiisan -”

“I don’t _care_ ,” Asahi snarls, “what they’d think, because it’s the truth. They took me in, they cared for me, and they didn’t have to. I am grateful for that. But they could never, never equal what I have lost.”

“And me?” Hajime whispers. The tears are spilling over, now, and he cannot bring himself to care. Everything he thought he knew about what Asahi holds the most dear is collapsing into nothing, but surely - surely he won’t say - “Asa, what about me?”

Asahi seems to stop short for a second as he takes in Hajime’s expression. When he speaks, his tone is more measured, but still unmistakably angry. “You have - saved me. In so many ways. But you cannot equal what I have lost, and it is the utter height of arrogance for you ever suppose you could.”

“Arrogance?” Hajime says, and the terrible sting of it curdles his sorrow and pain into anger. “ _Arrogance_? You told me you loved me! You said you wanted to spend as many years as you could with me!”

“Because I never thought I could go back home!”

“ _This is your home!_ ”

The shout raises several bats from a tree nearby as it echoes down the hillside. They both are on their feet now, snarling in each other’s faces. Asahi is terrifying in his anger, his burning words spat from behind tight teeth and his shoulders trembling as he tries to keep some semblance of restraint over his rage.

“It is not, and it _never_ will be my true home,” he growls. “And you, if you loved me like you’ve always said, why the hell didn’t you speak to me about this before? You’ve known for so long, even Daichi knows, you said. Why did you not do every single thing in your power to help me find my skin?”

“How is that fair?” Hajime cries. “How could I possibly come up to you and ask you if you were a goddamn selkie without any proof but my wildest imaginings? Why didn’t _you_ trust me enough to tell me?”

“Trust you? _Trust_ you? It was not about trust, Hajime, it was about survival! I came so close to telling you, so many times, but humans steal our skins, force us to stay on land, force us to give them children, then revile those children because they are half our blood! If I’d told you, everyone in Crow House could have known in a week, and then the whole village! Are you going to blame me for protecting myself from getting stoned out of Crow House?”

“I would have _never_ -”

“How could I be sure of that?”

“Because I love you!” Hajime yells, desperate and raw and furious. “I would never do anything to hurt you, ever! I gave you the skin even though I love you, even though you might leave, because it’s for your happiness, your -”

“It should not have been ‘even though’, Hajime, why is it so fucking hard to get that through your head?” Asahi yells back. “It should have been _because_ you love me!”

“You expected me to be completely fine with you leaving and never returning?!”

“I can’t step on the beach without my heart fucking ripping into two! I haven’t seen my parents, my family, my friends in ten years! I was _fourteen_! I was fourteen when some bastard stole my skin and sold it for a fortune and left me hungry and crying and lost and trapped on land! And you ask me why I couldn’t trust you? Because of this! Because you still can’t understand! You’re human, Hajime, and I am not! Yes, I would have expected you to realise what I’ve had to leave behind, and I would have expected you to want that for me as soon as you realised there was a way for me to get it back! Is your love for me so selfish?”

“ _Selfish?_ ”

There’s a ringing silence in the absence of their voices. Hajime breaks it with a choked laugh, hot tears now streaming down his cheeks.

“So the stories are right, then,” he says. “I should have trusted them, instead of trusting in - in us. I should have realised you really would take the chance to leave without a hint of fucking remorse. Isn’t that right?”

“Remorse?” Asahi gasps. “Did you not hear a _word_ of what I just -”

He stops short, his face going cold in a way Hajime has never seen before. “That’s right,” he says, and his voice is like iron. Like ice. “You should have. And I should have known a human would never understand what a skin means to a selkie. I knew I was right not to have told you.”

“Then leave,” Hajime says, his shaking voice sounding distant to his own ears. “You would have done it in a heartbeat if you’d found the skin on your own, yes? Because none of us mean anything to you? Because _I_ mean nothing to you? Then do it now. You’re no longer _trapped_ here with us. So leave, like you always meant to.”

The flames in Asahi’s eyes flare brighter than they’ve been the whole night, sparkling through a film of sudden tears. For a moment Hajime thinks he might hit him; but he strides away from Hajime, snatching up the skin in one fluid motion, and vanishes into the night.

Hajime buries his face in his hands, finally allowing himself to sob. It had all gone so horribly, horribly wrong. It had been meant to be a loving gesture, a tender moment, and now - and now -

His head shoots up, and he stares blankly into the distance as the realization hits him. _He’s actually leaving_ , his mind screams at him. _What are you doing?!_

“No,” he whispers, frantically wiping the tears from his eyes as he starts to stumble down the hillside. “No -”

He’s never run faster in his life. He leaps over boulders, sprints over thorns, falls and gets up and falls again in reckless pursuit as the enormity of what has happened slams into him over and over again. Asahi, his Asahi, Asahi with his broad back and sunrise smile and deep laugh and warm hands is leaving him forever, and his last words to him are going to be _leave like you always meant to do_.

To reach the ocean, Asahi has to either go back to the village or to the cove on the south coast, which is deserted because of its unsuitability as a fishing harbour. The cove is nearly twice the distance from Crow House than the village, but Asahi surely would not go to the village at this time, when it would still be bustling and when there would be fifty witnesses to see him go into the water. So Hajime directs his steps to the cove, and arrives with his lungs bursting and needles stabbing his chest, searching desperately as he runs down the sand.

He sees Asahi’s yukata first, abandoned a little way above the waterline. Then one of his sandals and the tie he uses for his hair, both soaked in seawater and lying on the sand. And in the water, where the cove opens up to the wider ocean, he can see Asahi’s silhouette, the skin draped across his shoulders.

“Asahi!” he yells. “Asahi, wait, please! Turn around, please, don’t -”

But the wind carries his cries in the wrong direction, the waves drown his words, and he can only watch, through tear-blurred eyes, as Asahi’s form melts into that of a seal and sinks beneath the waves.


	6. advice, cove, call

Hajime doesn’t remember how he made it back to Crow House that night. He only remembers stumbling through the door and into the dining room, drenched to the waist and scattering sand all over the floor, and falling into a startled Daichi’s arms with a dry sob.

“He’s gone,” he’d whispered, shaking and cold to the bone. “Daichi, I’ve lost him, he’s left, he’s - he’s -”

“Who’s gone? Asahi?” Daichi had said, supporting him as he sank to the ground. “What happened to him?”

“He’s _gone_ ,” Hajime had whispered. “We were right, he was -”

He’d looked around at everyone else in the room - Hitoka, Ryuu, Keishin, Tadashi, and Ukai-jiisan, all looking at him with varying degrees of concern - and thought, with a sudden viciousness, _They **were** your family, you bastard! They still are, they deserve to know!_

“He was a selkie,” he’d said as loudly as he could manage, his voice breaking. “And his skin, it was the one Sakamoto-san had bought, and I stole it, I gave it to him, and - and -”

Daichi had gone pale. “And he’s gone?”

“He left,” Hajime had sobbed, burying his face in Daichi’s shoulder. “He left us, he left _me_ , he - Daichi -”

Hitoka had covered her mouth as silent tears started in her eyes. Tadashi and Ryuu had looked equally shocked, equally horrified. Keishin had pressed his mouth in a thin line, his eyes damp and clouded. Ukai-jiisan had watched Hajime cry with a face like stone, tight lines etched at the corners of his mouth and between his brows.

And Daichi had taken Hajime to his room, held him as he cried his heart out, and cried with him through half the night.

When he’d woken the next morning, he hadn’t immediately realised why he felt so horribly, horribly empty - and when he did, in the utter bleakness of that moment, he’d seriously considered just jumping off the roof of the house. He’d shaken himself out of it instantly, because that was no solution, that would help no one - besides, what would his mother do without him ? And how would everyone at Crow House feel if they lost him so soon after Asahi? He couldn’t do that to any of them.

But he’d watched the sun rise, and looked out the window of Daichi’s room at a world that no longer contained Asahi - that never would again - and in that moment, he’d been absolutely certain that his broken heart would never, ever taste happiness again.

⸶⸷

Unfortunately, life went on. In the absence of Asahi, in the aching absence of his love, it feels as though everything ought to come to a grey, desolate halt - but it could not. His mother gives him rough, kind words of support and a brief kiss to the cheek whenever he asks, and Saeko-san had sent him home with a tight hug when his hands had been shaking too badly in the forge to even pick up the tongs. But they have their businesses to run, and he is duty-bound to help them. They don’t push him, but he forces himself to return to work.

Apart from them, and the six who had been in the room when he’d fallen to his knees in Crow House, no one knows. It would not be fair to say that they do not care; half the village expresses sorrow that Asahi-kun had had to go visit a relative living so far away, and surprise that he hadn’t told them - ‘Such a sweet boy, and not the slightest word!’ - and he knows they view his swollen eyes with sympathetic, worried concern. But their concern dies a mayfly’s death, for they too have their own lives to lead, their own families to care for. The world turns, and Hajime is dragged forward against his will.

He thinks over their argument every second he can spare, going over the last words they’d spat at each other in agonizing detail. Was he in the wrong? Had he truly been the monster Asahi had seemed to think he was? Was it his fault that Asahi was no longer by his side? Had he driven him away? “I understand how you feel, of course I do,” Daichi says one night, both of them sitting in the tavern's kitchen with tankards of beer in their hands, leaning against the wall. “You both were so - so deeply in love, I can’t imagine Asahi saying anything like it being - being _arrogant_ for you to think you meant more to him than what he’s lost. But, Hajime -”

“Say it,” Hajime says wearily, when he doesn’t continue. “Say it, Dai. I want to know. I need to know what I did wrong.”

“It’ll only hurt you -”

“Please.”

“If - if you’d been thrown into the ocean and forced to live as a seal for ten years - _by_ seals - and had had to resign yourself to the fact that you’d probably never get to see your family again, that you’d probably never step on land again - if you finally got the chance to go, wouldn’t you be overjoyed? Wouldn’t you just want to take it and go? And wouldn’t you be furious with anyone who dared suggest that you should just stay back?”

“I didn’t know!” Hajime slams his tankard down and buries his face in his hands, feeling the tears start again and hating it. He’s so, so tired of crying. “I didn’t think, I didn’t _know_ , I - fuck, fuck, _fuck_ \- “

“If someone down there told you they loved you,” Daichi continues, softly, “and then expected your love for them to be enough for you to stay -”

Hajime gets to his feet and slams out the door into the yard. Daichi lets him go in the same silence he holds out his arms to him with when he comes back inside half an hour later, face tearstained and his hands shaking.

“Don’t you want him back?” Hajime whispers to him, thinking, _My fault, my fault, my fault_.

Daichi’s chuckle breaks in too many places. “More than I can say,” he says. “But he’s not coming back, Haji. I’m so, so fucking sorry, but he isn’t. And somehow - somehow - we have to learn how to live with it.”

⸶⸷

Ukai-jiisan calls him into his study ten days after Asahi leaves.

“Sit, boy,” he says, gesturing to the spot opposite him at the low writing table, and Hajime does, wondering what the old man is going to say to him, scared that he won’t be able to hold it together if he starts talking about Asahi.

“I have a story I’d like you to listen to, and then I’m going to give you some advice. You’d better listen extremely carefully to everything I’m going to tell you, because it will not be repeated. You hear me?”

“Yes, ojiisan.” He folds his hands in his lap, knowing this is not to be taken lightly.

“Good.” Ukai-jiisan frowns at the blank paper on his desk like it’s insulted him. His fingers are tightly interlaced. “You know I was a samurai, yes?”

“Yes, ojiisan.”

“I was your age, twenty four. I was in the prime of my career, the lords were vying for my loyalty, and the lady I had sworn myself to at the time was expanding her territory. We’d made camp for a few days in the spring while we waited for the lady’s spies to bring back the information we needed to plan our attack. I had nothing to do, so I joined the guards sometimes in their rounds. The camp was big enough that there were all the hangers-on such an establishment generally attracts - beggars, thieves, tricksters, and prostitutes, both men and women. We could not possibly keep all of them out - and in the case of the prostitutes, no one tried very hard.

“One evening, I caught one of those women trying to sneak into the tent of one of my lady’s vassals, who was not there at the time. I held her at swordpoint and demanded her intentions, and she stammered that she had just left something in the tent the previous night which she had forgotten to retrieve. I’d seen her enter and exit his tent frequently, but I could not rule out the possibility of theft. I told her to go take whatever it was, and show it to me when she came out. She emerged holding the most beautiful skin of fur I had ever seen, pearl grey and soft as down. I realised, then, what she was, and how this particular vassal had ensured her services for as long as he had. She looked so terrified, so desperate as she stood in front of me dressed in those filthy rags, that I sheathed my sword without another word. I never saw a woman run so fast, and I never heard such wrath from a man as I did that day. But he could do nothing to me, for I was my lord’s favourite, and all I had done was allow a prostitute I had seen often enter his tent retrieve something she claimed to be hers, and that I was fairly certain was not his, for I had never seen it in his possession, had I? My lady laughed for an hour after that interview, and was doubly pleased with me, for she had never liked that vassal.”

Ukai-jiisan propped his chin in his hand, now looking out of the window. “It was her eyes that did it, I suppose. She had lovely, large eyes, not unlike Asahi’s - but pitch black, not brown. I never thought to see her again. But seven years later, I and a small company were sailing for one of the southern islands to subdue a vassal who had taken a few two many liberties with his people. We encountered a storm, and foundered, and capsized. Everyone perished, and I would have too if she had not happened to be close by at the time. She saved me, and dragged me to shore. The very shore you returned from, ten nights ago.”

Hajime clenches his jaw, and manages to keep silent. 

“She left me at the cove - the selkie cove, I always called it in my mind thereafter - and told me to walk north, and I would find a village. I was soaked and shivering and starving, but I had enough presence of mind to ask her if she could meet me at the cove a week from then. She gave me an enigmatic look, but said nothing, and disappeared into the waves. She was there, however, a week later. I knelt there, in the water, and offered her my sword as a mark of respect, and thanked her for saving my life. I gave her some mochi - or daifuku? I forget. Something sweet as a paltry gift, something she would not find under the water and would not have encountered in the circumstances she was in before. She took it with a smile, and ate it in front of me.” He chuckled a little wryly. “I think the taste surprised her, but she liked it well enough. And when she had finished, and was about to leave, I - well. The moonlight turned my head, I suppose, but . . . in the water, she was so different. She was confident, and powerful, and charming, and the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. I’d only met her twice - thrice, if you count near-drowning - and on that beach, I asked her if there was any possibility that she would be my wife.”

“You - what?”

“I know, child, I know. She laughed in my face, and left. But she came back every half moon night after that, for some months. Six, I think, or seven? I would sit and talk to her the whole night long. And on the last night, she said she would indeed be my wife. I never did fathom why.”

Ukai-jiisan sighed and picked up an ink brush, dipping it in an inkwell and beginning to write with slow, careful strokes. “I was tired of a warrior’s life by then . . . I could not spend my whole life looking over my shoulder for a treacherous knife in my back or striving to serve my lady with my blood and my body, only to die on the battlefield and have my eyes pecked out by crows. I had been given a chance to start afresh, and I used it. I was a farm labourer, scribe, and trader by turns, over three decades, and my wealth grew. She stayed with me for twelve years after our daughter was born, but when she left, she never came back. And she never let me touch her cloak, her skin.”

“Your daughter?” Hajime asks, as politely as he can manage. “I never knew -”

“No. No, not many people do. Her name was Mikasa. She took after me, unfortunately . . . she died a general in war, serving the son of my old lady’s rival. Her husband was her lieutenant.”

“I see.”

“Mmm.” Ukai-jiisan sighs, starting on a new line. “She was too much like me for us to ever get along. Keishin never knew her much.”

“Oh.” Hajime ducks his head in apology as Ukai-jiisan turns an inquiring eye onto him. “No, I just -”

“You just what?”

“Kei-nii always says he - he swims like a selkie, and I just thought how appropriate it really is.”

Ukai-kjiisan snorts with amusement. “True enough. He is quarter selkie, so it would be strange if he did not.”

“He knows - ?”

“Of course he knows. I told him when he was fifteen.”

“I see . . . ojiisan, pardon me, but - but why did you tell me this?”

“Why indeed? Take it as a cautionary tale, or a tale of hope, or an old man’s rambling. You may do as you please, but the advice I wanted to give you, having dealt with a selkie before, is this. You see these titles?”

He places the brush aside and pushes the paper to Hajime. Hajime takes it, and sees the names of several compendiums of myth and folklore.

“Read those, and read them well. They are all in this room, and you will find information in them that you will not find anywhere else. I will tell you now, however, that your best chance is the myth of the seven tears. You know it?”

“Isn’t it the one where, um . . . if you are unhappy in your marriage, and you cry seven tears into the ocean, a selkie will come and . . . take you under the ocean?”

“That’s the gist of it, yes. It is the only way to call a selkie that I know of. Cry seven tears for them, and wait for the call to reach them.”

“You’re trying to help me get him back,” Hajime realises, searching Ukai-jiisan’s face in some shock. “Why, ojiisan?”

Ukai-jiisan scowls at him a little. “Listen, boy, do not question help when it is offered so freely. You loved him - pardon me, you still do. And you were a fool to give him the skin if you wanted to keep him, but you loved him too well not to do so, and there is no fault in that. There is no fault in such selflessness.”

“He didn’t think it was - he said -”

“To be sure he did. But the fact remains that few people would have done what you did, and he may not have been grateful at the time, but knowing him, he will come to realise it sooner rather than later. Read the scrolls, child. The seven tears may not help you get him back, mind, but if you want to see him at least one last time, I would say this is your best bet.”

“Did - did you try it with your wife? Did you see her again?”

“Never. She chose to leave, I let her go, and there was nothing to be achieved by trying to bring her back. She was where she belonged, and I was where I belonged.” Something flickers in Ukai-jiisan’s eyes, and for a moment Hajime sees past the steel-straight spine of a warrior to the old, old weariness in his eyes. “I could not face the disappointment month after month, standing there and never knowing if she would show up. I had a daughter to care for at home, besides. I had enough to get by. You, Hajime, you are crazed enough to stand in the ocean until you freeze for him. You love him deeply enough for that. I could not do it, but if it works for you, no one will be happier than I. I thought long and hard about whether to tell you this, but . . . I have enough faith in your sense, brat. You will be careful, and you will know your limits. Am I right?”

Hajime sees his weariness, the weariness of a man who has known enough sorrows that he stopped bothering to count long ago, and suddenly knows why he is telling Hajime this, why he is trying to alleviate his pain as much as he can. He gets up and crosses the table to hug the old man’s thin shoulders tightly, gratitude burning in his chest.

“Thank you, ojiisan.” he murmurs, shifting back and bowing deeply. “Thank you so, so much for this gift. I will not break your faith in me.”

“You’re welcome,” Ukai-jiisan says gruffly. “Remember that full moon nights are when it’s easiest for them to stay seals, new moon nights are easier for them to be human, and half moon nights are the nights of change, when they can switch between both easily. The latter are your best bet.”

His hand settles briefly on top of Hajime’s head. “And good luck to you,” he says quietly. “You will need it.”

⸶⸷

“Half moon’s tomorrow,” Ryuu says, looking more serious than Hajime has ever seen him. “You going, then, Haji-nii?”

“I think so,” Hajime says, sighing as he rests his head against the veranda pillar. “Ojiisan told me exactly what to do, and he evidently thinks there’s at least a chance it’ll work.”

Hitoka slips her small hand into his, squeezing a little. “What will you tell him, if you see him?” she asks. She looks almost as terrible as Hajime feels, her eyes ringed with shadows and her lips bitten red.

 _Look what you’ve done to her, Asa,_ Hajime thinks with a sharp pang, and presses a soft kiss to her head.

“I don’t know,” he says quietly. “But I - I have to apologise.”

“He left us,” Tadashi murmurs, and his eyes are stony as he wraps his arms around his whole leg. “And he said such terrible things to you when you were the one who gave him his skin back. Why do you have to apologise when he’s the one who broke your heart?”

“Because I - I betrayed him.” The words are hard to say, hard to scrape from his throat, but he knows they are true. He knows Daichi was right. “Whatever else he said, he was right about the fact that I treated the whole thing like - like the fact that he would want to stay with us was obvious.”

“I would have thought that the same, you can’t blame yourself for -”

“No,” Ryuu says. “But he does have to apologise.”

Hajime gives him a wry smile. “You think so too, Ryuu?”

“Yeah. An apology doesn’t have to mean that you think you deserve blame. And if you love him and you want him back, Haji-nii, you do have to apologise.”

“I agree,” Hitoka says unexpectedly. “As far as you told us, getting him back isn’t even in the picture, right, Haji-nii? The most you’re hoping for is to see him again. But if you want him to listen, and if you want there to be even a chance of him coming back, then you need to show him you know that you hurt him, and that you’re sorry that you did - even if you didn’t mean to.”

“So wise, Yacchan,” Hajime smiles, ruffling her hair gently. “And there you have it, Tadashi.”

Tadashi looks away from them all, still looking angry. Hajime reaches out to put a hand on his knee.

“It doesn’t mean I’m not upset,” he says. “It doesn’t mean he didn’t hurt me. It doesn’t mean he didn’t hurt all of us. It just means that - that he’s hurt too. And he needs to know that I understand that.”

“What about what _you_ need?”

“I can’t afford to worry about what I need if I want him back, Tadashi. I have to trust that he’ll be the one thinking about that. I know you miss him, but I can’t - you need to understand that I have to -”

Tadashi buries his face in his arms. Hitoka goes to his side, settling one comforting hand on his shoulder.

“I might agree with you, Haji-nii,” she says, and Hajime has never seen her look so grave, “but, like you said, it doesn’t mean I’m not upset. If he comes - whenever he comes - you have to promise that you’ll drag him here, because I have a couple of things to say to him. I think we all do.”

“I definitely do,” Ryuu says, and he’s smiling but he’s wiping at his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“I don’t have much to say to him, I just want to punch him in the face,” Tadashi says, lifting his head, and the rest of them can’t help laughing. He smiles, bitterly, and says, “Bring him back to us, Haji-nii.”

⸶⸷

So Hajime goes. He takes something warm to sleep in, because he doesn't know how long he’ll have to wait and he wants to be prepared to spend the whole night there. Daichi packs some onigiri for him in a pouch, and hands him a waterskin, and sends him off with a tight hug and a soft smile. 

It’s a half an hour walk from Crow House, which means it’s nearly an hour’s walk from the village, but he’s so preoccupied with thinking about what he should say, what he shouldn’t say, how he’ll act, how Asahi might act, and how likely it is that he’ll even show up, that when he arrives it feels like hardly ten minutes have passed. 

He hasn’t come here very often before, given that the village beach is much closer and has a smaller, safer cove he’s played in as a child. This is a larger one, with several huge rock teeth scattered beneath the shallow surface and glinting at the entrance to the ocean. Those treacherous teeth will not allow any boat to make a safe landing on shore, though the lack of strong currents and the smooth, secluded beach would have made it otherwise ideal for any fisherman.

It would have been quite beautiful under any other circumstances, but Hajime, sliding down the low ridge surrounding the cove, has only roiling anxiety in the pit of his stomach. His heart is already pounding in his throat as he leaves his belongings on the beach and steps into the water.

 _Seven tears_ , he thinks. _The difficulty will probably be limiting them only to seven._

And so it proves. He has only to remember Asahi’s expression when he’d said _I knew I was right not to have told you_ , and the tears come easily. He watches them fall into the water, counting seven, then quickly wipes his face on his sleeve and prepares himself to wait. This is his first and best chance, for Asahi surely cannot have swum too far in the past three weeks. If he ever responds, he’s most likely to do so tonight.

But Hajime stands in the shallows with his teeth chattering for half an hour, an hour, an hour and a half, and there is nothing. He’s just decided that he might as well sit and wait on the shore when there’s a ripple on the surface of the dimly lit water, wide and quickly fading.

“Oh -” He steps forward without thinking, straining to see, and nearly slips on a slimy rock. _Is it him? Gods, please, please let it be him -_

It’s a human figure, a male figure, rising out of the water and coming towards him. Fur draped around his shoulders, yes, but - but - but this man isn’t quite Asahi’s height, and he certainly isn’t as broad. The fur of the skin is pale fawn, not dark chestnut, and the man’s hair is much shorter, and -

 _It’s not him_ , Hajime realises, stopping short as harsh disappointment rises like acid in his mouth. _Goddammit . . ._

“You called?” the man says. He’s very handsome, Hajime has to admit. His dark brown hair is swept to the side, his eyes are large and almost luminous in the moonlight, and his mouth is curved in an enchanting little smile below a pert nose. His shoulders are fairly wide, tapering down to a trim waist, and he walks with the kind of grace unique to beautiful people who are fully aware of their beauty.

“I -” Hajime has to clear his throat before he can speak without frustrated tears rising. “I did, yes, but -”

The man stops a bare two feet from Hajime, and his smile shifts to something teasing and rakish as he reaches out to tip Hajime’s chin up with practiced ease.

“First time doing this kind of thing, hmm?” he says, lilting and musical. “Couldn’t quite take the wife’s nagging any longer? Well, I’m here to take _very_ good care of you, handsome.”

“Listen, it’s not what you think -” Hajime pushes his hand away, taking a step back. “I’m not looking for -”

“Oh, we have enough time to figure out exactly what you’re looking for,” the man says, unperturbed. “Introductions first, yes? My name is Tooru.”

“I’m - I’m Iwaizumi Hajime. Listen, uh, Tooru-san, if I could just explain -”

“Sure, anything you want, but how about we step out of the water first? It’s really not a pleasant night. I hope your house is nearby -” His eyes slowly scan Hajime’s body, down and up and down again, and his smile grows a little wider. “I really don’t want to waste much time.”

And Hajime’s severely frayed patience snaps.

“Listen, bastard,” he snarls, stepping as far away from him as he can get. “I was _not_ waiting for you, you hear me? I’m waiting to see someone else. I am _not_ going to sleep with you, I am _not_ interested in you, so you can take that fucking smirk and go back to wherever the hell you came from. Sorry to have wasted your time.”

Tooru’s mouth drops open in pure shock. “You - what -” His forehead wrinkles as he stares at Hajime. “You’re _waiting for someone_? You’re waiting for a _selkie_? That’s why you cried? Because you thought it might call them back?”

“Yes,” Hajime snaps, folding his arms across his chest. “So thanks, but no thanks.”

Tooru gapes at him for a moment more before breaking into surprised laughter. “I have never,” he chuckles, “had this particular reception from anyone I’ve met on land, dear gods.”

He tugs his skin closer about his shoulders, grinning the first genuine grin Hajime has seen from him. “So who is it? Who’s the person you’re trying to meet?”

“Asahi,” Hajime says shortly. “Know him?”

Tooru tilts his head, thinking. “Asahi? The name sounds a little familiar, but I’ve never met him, I don’t think. What happened to -”

“That’s not for you to know,” Hajime says dangerously.

Tooru’s smile still lingers. “I suppose it isn’t, yes. Well then, there doesn’t seem to be much purpose to my remaining here, so I’ll take my leave, Iwaizumi Hajime. I sincerely hope we meet again.”

“I sincerely hope we don’t,” Hajime growls, and Tooru only laughs as he begins to walk away.

“Do remember wrap up,” he calls over his shoulder. “You’ve stood in the cold long enough.”

“Is it possible to call someone else in the same night? To call more than one selkie?” Hajime shouts back, and his heart drops as Tooru’s silvery laugh floats back to him over the water.

“Unfortunately not! Better luck next time!”


	7. persevere, tears, moonlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> selkie paradeee  
> i literally threw in everyone i thought was pretty that's it  
> 9k words of crying hajime coming your way, kind reader

⸶⸷

Month two

⸸

_Do you know how much of my life on land has been utter, utter torment, with my true home so close and yet so unreachable? You should know, **you** should know, Hajime!_

⸸

The tears come easily this time, too. And again, it is not Asahi.

“Oh,” the selkie says after Hajime explains, looking surprised. “I see.”

“I apologise,” Hajime says, bowing. “But I desperately want one last chance to speak to him, and this was the only way I could think of to see him again.”

“Oh, of course. I certainly cannot think of any other way you might find him. I wish you the best of luck. What is his name?”

“Asahi.”

“I will remember, and I will ask around. I’m sure someone knows where he’s gone.”

“Thank you, thank you so much. May I know your name?”

“Nobuyuki,” the selkie smiles. He’s quite different from Tooru, but just as handsome, with full lips, kind, dark eyes and smooth caramel skin.

“You have my gratitude, Nobuyuki-san. I apologise again for having wasted your time.”

“Not at all.” Nobuyuki turns to leave, tugging his dark pelt closer around him as the water begins to seethe at his waist. “I sincerely hope he returns to you, Hajime-san.”

⸶⸷

Month three

⸸

_Trust you? **Trust** you? It was not about trust, Hajime, it was about survival!_

⸸

The selkie laughs, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Is that so? Ah, I never expected to be rejected - and for the first time to be for _such_ a reason! I’ll certainly have a story to tell when I go back.”

“May I know your name?”

“It’s Mika.”

“You have my most sincere apologies for wasting your time like this, Mika-san.”

“Such a polite man,” she smiles, tracing his cheek with one finger before stepping back. “It’s not a bother at all, lovely. I do hope you find him!”

⸶⸷

Month four

⸸

_I should have known a human would never understand what a skin means to a selkie._

⸸

The selkie cocks his hip, folding his arms. “This is really the reason you cried?”

“It is, Akinori-san. I’m sorry for -”

Akinori waves his words away, his pale hair flashing in the moonlight. “That’s all right, Hajime-san, just - I never met a human who would do so much for a selkie. I never knew that any such humans existed.”

Hajime’s throat clenches, and he knows Akinori can see the pain on his face.

“How long have you been doing this?” Akinori asks him, more gently now.

“This is, uh . . . this is the fourth time.”

“And how long will you continue?”

“As long as I must.”

Akinori smiles, his narrow eyes crinkling at the corners. “Asahi was luckier than he knew, I think. I wish you luck.”

⸶⸷

Daichi and Ryuu greet him in the morning as he trudges back into the village - he’s resigned himself to sleeping on the beach, now, because it takes at least an hour for a selkie to show up, and often more.

“Still no luck?” they ask, and don’t look surprised when he shakes his head.

⸶⸷

Month five

⸸

“ _Here’s hoping for six more,” Asahi says, gently pressing his smile to the corner of Hajime’s mouth._

⸸

Hajime blinks the last of the tears away, and scowls. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Aww, look at you,” Tooru coos, smirking as he brushes seawater off the shoulder of his skin. “Poor thing, your nose is all red.”

“Why the hell are you back?”

“You do realise I live along this coast, don’t you? I’m going to hear the call whenever I’m close enough. I heard it the other times, too, but I knew someone else would probably take it, so I let it be. It’s been five months, though! How long are you going to keep pining for your lost love?”

“As long as it takes,” Hajime growls. “Did you ask around? Did you hear anything?”

“Unfortunately, Iwaizumi Hajime, I did not. No one in the area knows where he is - though they all know _who_ he is. A real tragedy, a boy lost so young. Were you the one who took his skin?”

“Fuck you!” Hajime yells, real anger pulsing through his veins. “How _dare_ you even suggest that I’d -”

Tooru holds up his hands, startled. “Hey, I didn’t mean -”

But Hajime is already striding back to shore. “Count yourself lucky I didn’t break your goddamn nose,” he snarls over his shoulder. “Next time, I won’t hold back, so do _not_ show up again!”

⸶⸷

Month six

⸸

_I was fourteen when some bastard stole my skin and sold it for a fortune and left me hungry and crying and lost and trapped on land!_

⸸

This selkie is as kind as Nobuyuki, his wide brown eyes full of sympathy as Hajime explains to him why he had used the seven tears.

“So you weren’t waiting for me, then,” he says, smiling gently. “You must love him very much to be doing this for him.”

“I - I do,” Hajime says, praying that his voice remains steady. “Um, your name -?”

“Koushi, but do call me Suga, it’s what everyone calls me.”

“Suga-san, I apologize for having called you for no purpose -”

“Ah, don’t worry about that. What’s his name, the one you’re waiting for? I might be able to let him know.”

“It’s Asahi.”

Suga’s mouth parts slightly, then settles into a cold line. “Asahi?” he says. “So your name is Hajime?”

“I - yes,” Hajime says, desperate hope blooming in his chest. “You know him? Suga-san, please wait!”

But he shifts, his fur swallowing his slim form in a bare second, and the silver seal swims away from Hajime without a backward glance.

⸶⸷

Month seven

⸸

_They’re twenty one. Saeko-san is traveling for a week, and they are alone as they work on a particularly heavy lance._

_“Hajime, could you pass me the hammer?” Asahi says, wiping the sweat off his forehead. “The one right next to you, there.”_

_“Sure, beautiful,” Hajime says as he hands it over, because Asahi looks especially good today, so why not? Asahi’s nose wrinkles, but he smiles, and Hajime gets to steal kiss after laughing kiss behind the forge that afternoon._

⸸

This selkie looks a little older than the others, both his eyes and hair a soft honey.

“Akiteru,” he says, when Hajime asks his name. “Don’t give up, Hajime-kun. I never thought I'd say this about a selkie, but - I’m sure he’ll come back to you eventually. I’ll let him know that you’re waiting, if I meet him.”

“Thank you,” Hajime says, bowing. He looks at his reflection in the restless water, and wonders how many more times he will have to do this.

⸶⸷

Month eight

⸸

_They’re nineteen. Hajime has his feet in Daichi’s lap and his back against Tadashi’s, and Ukai-jiisan is reading to them. Across from him, Asahi is listening intently, with his chin on his knees. Ryuu, sitting on the window ledge behind him, is busy weaving flowers into his loose hair while Hitoka silently directs him with light touches. Hajime has never seen Asahi look more handsome or more content, surrounded by his family, with the warm light of the lanterns dancing in the gaps between the petals in his hair._

⸸

“It’s Eita,” the selkie says, pursing his pretty mouth. “And no, I don’t know him. I can’t guarantee anything, but I can mention you to him if I ever do meet him.”

“Thank you, Eita-san. I’d be very grateful if you would.”

⸶⸷

Month nine

⸸

_“Asahi, stop,” Hajime whines, actually whines. “No, listen -”_

_But Asahi can’t stop laughing. He’s curled up on the floor, hugging his stomach and crying with laughter._

_“Listen! I didn’t have a choice, okay, it was my honour at stake - “_

_“Oh, that’s adorable,” Asahi gasps, “tiny Hajime, trying to prove he can actually steal eggs from the roost because Saeko-san was teasing, and - and then -”_

_“Okay, so now you know,” Hajime grumbles, really struggling not to join in as Asahi bursts out laughing again. “Please dont tell Daichi, okay? He’s never found out why I hate chickens so much.”_

_“Of all the things to be scared of,” Asahi wheezes, wiping tears from his eyes. “Oh, I’ll never look at you the same way again. Don’t worry, I’ll protect you from the fierce birds!”_

_“Shut up,” Hajime groans, pinching his arm. “What’s **your** biggest fear, then, huh?”_

_“Losing you,” Asahi says easily, drunk on laughter, his smile not the sunrise but the noon sun. “Losing you is my greatest fear, Hajime.”_

⸸

“I’m Yuuji,” the selkie grins. “Sorry, Hajime-san, I know the guy, but I haven’t seen him in years. I can still keep an eye out, if you like.”

“I’d appreciate that, Yuuji-san, thank you.”

⸶⸷

Month ten

⸸

_They’re twenty. Hajime finds a scrap of paper crumpled in the corner of Asahi’s room. In his shaky, uncertain writing are the words ‘Iwaizumi Asahi’, struck out several times with firm strokes. Tiny letters along the bottom say ‘How do I embarrass even myself??’_

_Hajime asks Asahi to marry him the second he steps into the room, roaring with laughter but also kind of wanting to cry because he’s so happy. Asahi is so embarrassed he hides in Hitoka’s room for an hour while Hajime sits outside, listing the wedding food, the guests, the decorations, laughing at Asahi’s whines of mortified protest._

_“Why do I love you,” Asahi sighs when he finally emerges._

_“Because I would actually marry you in a heartbeat, and you know it,” Hajime grins back, and Asahi’s eyes are so soft as he bends down to kiss him._

⸸

“Morisuke.” This selkie is short and slim, with hair like Akiteru’s. “What’s his name, the one you’re looking for?”

“Asahi. Do you know him?”

“Oh!” Morisuke looks delighted. “Oh, is he back? He found his skin?”

“He did, yes.”

“That’s wonderful! Gods, it’s been so long, his family must be delighted. We were good friends, you know, before -” Morisuke’s eyes narrow a little, and Hajime nearly takes a step back at the sudden menace in his eyes. “You don’t intend to take his skin again, do you?”

“No! No, I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m not the one who took it in the first place. He’s more than strong enough to stop me from doing anything like that, anyway. I just - I just want to be able to speak to him.”

“I see.” Morisuke visibly relaxes, the edge vanishing from his sharp, astute gaze. “Well, I can tell you that he isn’t anywhere near these coasts. When did you say he came back?”

“More than ten months ago.”

“Then he must have gone to a different sea almost immediately, because I can tell you for certain that no one here knows where he is.”

“There was this one selkie I met, Suga-san. He knew my name without me telling him, so I thought perhaps -”

“Ah, Suga? Suga’s pod usually winters down south, by the Australian coast, and comes up here for the summer. He doesn’t live here. If he heard of you from Asahi, and none of us know where Asahi is, then he must have gone there. But if it’s been a while since you spoke to Suga, then he’s probably moved on. I’m sorry, Hajime-san, but he could be anywhere in the world. He does have to find his family, after all.”

“Right.” Hajime exhales, clenching his fists tight. “I understand. Thank you, Morisuke-san. If there’s anything you can do, if you can try to get word to him that I’m waiting -”

“Of course.” Morisuke pats him on the shoulder with a kind smile. “I’ll do my best.”

⸶⸷

Month eleven

⸸

_They’re sixteen. “You’re the biggest idiot I’ve ever met in my life,” Asahi tells him, and so easily lifts him to set him on the wall, so easily kicks his heart into startled pounding. The sunlight is gold and bright on Asahi’s skin, and his hands are so strong on Hajime’s waist, and Hajime can’t remember the last time he got this giddy this fast._

⸸

This selkie has black, silky hair, and his skin is pale and smooth, and his eyes are a deep blue. He’s young, and he’s tall, and the thick black fur on his shoulders makes him look even taller. “I’m Tobio,” he says, before Hajime can say anything. His gaze is serious, analyzing. “Akiteru-san told me about you.”

Hajime blinks. “Oh,” he says. “Then why did you come?”

“Because I wanted to see you,” Tobio says simply. “I knew Asahi-san when I was little. He was always kind to me. Why do you care about him so much? Why do you want to see him so badly?”

“Because . . . because I love him,” Hajime says slowly, figuring it’s better to be direct with this one. “And I miss him. And I want to tell him that I’m sorry.”

“Why do you love him?”

Hajime has to smile, but it’s crooked. “Because he was always kind to me, too. He was always kind to everyone. And I loved his kindness.”

“Only his kindness?”

“No, I - I loved his strength, and his smile, and - I loved so many different things about him.”

“Did he love you back?”

“ . . . He did.”

“Then he’ll probably come.”

It’s said like that’s the obvious answer, like it’s a certainty. Unexpected tears start in Hajime's eyes, and he laughs, choked. “You think so?” he says, hastily rubbing at his eyes. “He was very angry with me when he left.”

Tobio smiles a little, and it lights up his somber face in a way Hajime hadn’t expected. “Asahi-san could never hold a grudge for very long,” he says, before disappearing beneath the waves with a whirl of his fur.

⸶⸷

Month twelve

⸸

_They’re seventeen. Hajime is sleeping at Crow House, because the storm outside is bad enough that he can’t try to get to the village until it blows over. He’s lying with his back to Asahi, listening to his even breathing and thinking wistfully of how nice it would be if he could just roll over and nestle into his side. The few inches between them feels like the most insurmountable distance, and he aches to just reach out and touch him, but he can’t, can he?_

_He lies awake almost the whole night, just thinking about what it would be like if he could fall asleep holding him. It’s only a year later that he finds out that Asahi didn’t sleep that night, either._

⸸

She’s beautiful, the most beautiful selkie Hajime has seen till now, and it’s been a full year since he started the ritual of the seven tears. Her fur skin is ink black, like Tobio’s, the same as her hair. Her eyes are a lustrous dark grey, framed by lovely long lashes, and she has a small mole on the left side of her prettily curved mouth. Her skin is pale and milky, glowing faintly even in the dim light of the half moon. She looks like Tobio’s older sister, graceful and dainty even up to her waist in the restless ocean and swaying a little as she keeps her balance. Hajime has never been particularly interested in women, but he still has to force himself not to follow the pretty curve of her smooth neck down to her bare sternum that’s peeking between the edges of her fur pelt.

“You called?” she says, and her voice is so soft that he can barely catch it over the crash of the waves.

“Oh, um, yes, ma’am.” It slips out, and her eyes widen with surprise. “I mean -”

“There’s no need for such formality,” she smiles. “My name is Kiyoko. What is yours?”

“I’m Hajime, Kiyoko-san. Um, the reason that I - for the tears was -” She is still smiling politely as he talks, and he shakes himself, trying to focus. “I need to talk to a selkie I used to know, and this was the only way I could think of to find him. I’m sorry to have wasted your time, but I’m not looking for - it’s not the usual -”

“Oh, I see,” she says, tucking her hair behind one ear. She looks a little surprised, and more than a little curious. “Is that so? May I know who you’re looking for?”

“His name is Asahi.”

“Asahi?” If she had been beautiful before, she’s nothing short of ethereal now as she puts a hand to her mouth, her eyes shining with delight. “I knew him! Oh, it’s been so many years! Has he found his skin, then?”

“He did find his skin, yes.”

“That’s wonderful, his parents will be overjoyed! Oh, I must find out where he is, for he certainly didn’t come to us.”   
  
“May I ask how you know him, Kiyoko-san?”

“We were playmates, all those years ago. His family was part of one of the many pods that visit this coast in the summer. Those were truly golden months . . . he and I, and a few more - Akiteru, Morisuke, Suga - we chased fish everywhere, we wreaked havoc on the seaweed beds, we collected shells and found deserted islands to play on, goodness . . .” Her smile is growing distant, now. “We were such terrible children.”

 _You really had so many people waiting for you, Asahi,_ Hajime thinks, the enormity of his mistake dawning yet again as this selkie smiles so fondly of the memory of him from a decade ago. _You had so much more family to go home to._

“But you don’t know where he is?”

“I do not, but I will do my best to find out.” She is a little restless now, evidently eager to return to the ocean, and she raises a hand in farewell as she steps back. “And I will be sure to tell him of you, Hajime-san.”

⸶⸷

“So as far as you know, he isn’t even in this ocean.”

“No, he most likely isn’t. But so many people remember him, and so many have promised to get word to him if they can. It’ll reach him eventually, Dai, I know it will.”

“Hajime . . .”

“You can’t be telling me to give up now.”

“I’m not! I’m not, just . . .” Daichi sighs, and offers him a tired smile. “You need to take care of yourself too as well, okay?”

“I’m taking care of myself just fine. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“You might as well build a house there, you know, if you’re going to be spending nights for the next few years.”

“That’s . . . that’s not a bad idea, actually.”

“Wait, are you serious?”

⸶⸷

Month thirteen

⸸

_They’re sixteen. Tadashi arrived at Crow House a month ago, and still has trouble speaking, he still doesn’t say more than he absolutely has to. Hajime is alone with Saeko-san at the forge that day, both Ryuu and Asahi having fallen sick. He’s walking home, and happens to see Tadashi at the entrance of Makoto-san’s workshop, biting his lip as he looks anxiously down the street._

_“Hi, Tadashi-kun,” Hajime says, and Tadashi jumps as he turns. His overlong hair hides his face as he looks at the ground, both hands gripping his crutches tightly. “Are you waiting for someone? Daichi?”_

_Tadashi nods a little, still looking down._

_“I don’t think he’ll be heading back for a while now, kid, I heard that it was a rough day at sea. He’ll probably be late. I can walk you back, if you like.”_

_“That’s all right,” Tadashi whispers. “I can wait.”_

_“You’ll be starving by the time he makes it back. Let me just take you back, hm?”_

_And Tadashi eventually lets him. He has to carry him up the steepest parts of the hill, and he reaches Crow House panting._

_“T-thank you,” Tadashi says, touching his arm uncertainly. “You didn’t have to -”_

_“My pleasure,” Hajime pants, wiping his brow. “You aren’t a lightweight, are you?”_

_Tadashi returns his grin shyly just as Asahi sweeps the entrance curtain aside. He looks pale, and tired, but when he sees the softly glowing expression on Tadashi’s face his own shifts into startled pleasure. Tadashi goes to him, leaning one crutch against the wall so he can hug Asahi tight._

_“You brought him back?” Asahi asks, raising a hand to cradle the back of his head as he looks at Hajime. “Thank you.”_

_It’s only two soft words, but Hajime doesn’t forget the gratitude radiant in that smile for a long time._

⸸

“Suga-san? I - I wasn’t expecting -”

“Kiyoko convinced me to come see you, since I’m back for the summer,” Suga says, crossing his arms over his chest. His expression is severe, but it changes the longer he looks at Hajime. “Are you all right? You look different.”

“I do?”

“Yes, you look . . . thinner, I think.”

“Oh. That’s nothing, just . . . it’s nothing.”

Suga tilts his head a little. “Hajime-san.”

“Yes?”

“Come with me.”

Suga leads him to the beach, and settles himself on a boulder, patting the space next to him. Hajime sits, wondering what this is about. Suga puts his elbows on his crossed legs and leans forward expectantly.

“Tell me about him,” he says.

“What?”

“Tell me about Asahi.”

Hajime gives him a long look, but he’s serious. So he shrugs, and he does. For the first time, he has a companion on this beach, and he talks and talks like he never has before - for this is someone who knows Asahi differently, who hadn’t grown up with them, and he’s desperate for Suga to understand that he genuinely loves Asahi, despite not being from their world.

“ . . . and he left,” he says. “And he was so furious with me, I’d never seen him so angry. I understand my mistake now, I didn’t then but I do now. And Suga-san, I - gods, I miss him so much. Even if he hates me, I still want to talk to him just once more. Just to apologize. And then he can live his own life, where he belongs, and -”

“And what will you do?”

“Try to forget him, I suppose,” Hajime says, trying to smile. “What else can I do? But, Suga-san, I can’t do that without - I need him to know how I feel, I need him to hear me out, or I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to move on with my life. I see someone wearing the same pattern he used to wear, or smell the flowers he used to like, or hear someone laughing his laugh, and I have to find somewhere where people can’t see me because I’m crying all over again. I can’t live like this, I -”

He has to break off. “Oh,” Suga says, looking both concerned and a little alarmed as he reaches out. “Oh, Hajime-san -”

“I’m fine,” he sniffs, pressing the edge of his kosode to his eyes and waving Suga’s hand away with a wavering smile. “Like I said, it happens all the time.”

“You really love him,” Suga says softly.

“I do.”

“Well.” Suga wraps his skin tighter around himself, and looks out to sea. “I did meet him after he came back, you know.”

“You did?!” Hajime sits upright, tears entirely forgotten. “When? Where? Was he all right? Did he - ?”

“I’m telling you, I’m telling you!” Suga laughs. “He came down south to my pod’s winter grounds. Kiyoko told you his pod is not from here, yes? So he knew his family would not be in the area, especially not when it was just turning to winter. He came down to us, hoping that we would know where they were. He stayed with us for two months, I think, while we put the word out, and he left once we heard back.”

“Where did he go?”

“The other side of the world, almost. I don’t know precisely where.”

“Ah.” Hajime slumps. “So he won’t be likely to be around here any time soon.”

“No, unfortunately. He won’t be in reach of your call unless he’s in this particular sea.”

“Did he . . . did he tell you about me?”

Suga chuckles wryly. “He did, but I don’t know how much you want to hear.”

Cold creeps into Hajime’s chest. “Please - please tell me,” he says. “Does he hate me? Does he not want to see me?”

“You have to understand, Hajime-san, that he came to us with a lot of anger. A lot of distress. He was elated to be home, of course, but it left a mark on him, the way you had parted. When I spoke to him, no, he didn’t want to see you, but that was many months ago. As for hate . . . well, he did not speak of you flatteringly, but I could see that the words came from deep hurt - and that hurt came from very deep affection having been twisted. I would have said he was upset with you, very upset, but I can’t say he hates you. I don’t know if he could.”

“I see.” Hajime takes a long breath, putting his head in his hands. “That’s . . . that’s not too bad, I suppose.”

“I haven’t had much word of him since, but I do know he found his family. His brother’s gotten married, I think, and his sister has her own pod off the east Indian coast. He’s missed a lot of their lives.”

“It’s good that he found them,” Hajime murmurs. “It’s good that he’s finally home.”

Suga’s hand is soft on his arm. “Don’t give up on the seven tears, Hajime-san. Keep trying. He’ll hear eventually. And if he doesn’t, I’ll tell him everything the next time he visits, and I’ll make sure he comes straight here. Please don’t give up.”

⸶⸷

Month fourteen

⸸

_They’re eighteen, and their love is newly minted. Hajime sits straddling Asahi’s hips, one hand planted on the futon and the other trying to turn his chin._

_“Asahi, look at me. Asa, hey -”_

_Asahi screws his eyes shut tighter, and refuses to turn his face. His cheeks are painted red._

_“Asa,” Hajime sighs, stroking his cheek with one thumb. “How many times do I have to say it before you believe me?”_

_Asahi cracks one eye open to peek at him. “I’m not going to believe it no matter how many times you say it,” he mumbles. “Hajime -”_

_“You’re beautiful,” Hajime says softly, firmly. “Asahi, you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. You’re so, so beautiful, god, your eyes, your hair -”_

_“Stop,” Asahi moans, covering his face, but Hajime can see his embarrassed smile through his fingers. He grins, nudging Asahi’s hands aside with his nose._

_“Do you believe me?”_

_“I’m not. I don’t - I don’t look -” Asahi throws an arm over his eyes. “You know how I feel about - about me, about my face, my - my everything, ugh -”_

_“You’re fucking beautiful,” Hajime says, kissing the tip of his nose. “All of you, you hear me? Asahi, just looking at you makes my day. Honestly, I could sit and watch you for years, and survive just off of your beauty.”_

_“Exaggeration,” Asahi mumbles, still not looking at him. “Also, creepy.”_

_“There’s no winning with you,” Hajime laughs, curling into him to tuck his face into his neck. “But I’m going to tell you until you believe it.”_

⸸

“No,” Hajime says instantly. “Leave. Now.”

“Oh, come on,” Tooru says, frowning as he props a hand on his hip. “I’m sorry about last time, okay? I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Why the hell are you back?”

“Well, I guess - I can’t believe you’re still doing this. I wanted to see it for myself.”

“I told you I’d be doing it for as long as it takes. Don’t bother answering the call, next time.”

“What, and miss seeing your handsome face -” Tooru yelps as Hajime hefts a rock to throw at him. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I just - you really care about him this much? You, a human?”

“Yes,” Hajime snaps. “Yes, me, a human. Get it through your thick skull already.”

He turns and begins to make for shore, careful of where he’s stepping. Tooru calls from behind him. “He was stupid to have left you, then!”

Hajime whips around and throws the rock as hard as he can. It misses Tooru’s ear by a hair.

“Fuck - what was that for?” he cries, and Hajime allows himself to savour the look of horrified disbelief on his face.

“You know _nothing_ ,” Hajime growls. “You know nothing about him, and nothing about me. Stay _away_ , goddamn it!”

“All right, I apologise! Hey!”

Splashing footsteps follow Hajime, and Tooru catches up easily, walking by his side to the beach.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he really does look contrite. “You’re right, I know nothing about him or you, and I have absolutely no right to make any kind of comment on what happened between the two of you. Please accept my apology.”

Hajime sits down, sighing. “Fine,” he mutters. “Accepted. Now leave.”

But Tooru sits down next to him. “You know, I’m not just doing this to get a rise out of you,” he says. “I’m really curious about what it was like - like, what drew you to him, and what drew him to you. I’ve never heard of a relationship like this, where the human gave back the skin and -”

“Yeah, yeah.” Hajime scowls at him. “Why would I tell you anything?”

Tooru puts his head on his knees, and gives him his most engaging smile. “I’m a really good listener!”

Hajime snorts, turning away. “Nice try.”

“ _And_ I’m travelling to the north seas when the seasons turn, and if you tell me, I promise to convince Asahi to come back if I see him.”

“I don’t think you could -”

“I can be very convincing. Please, Hajime-san?”

Hajime groans quietly, and turns to face him, and Tooru sits up straight like an eager puppy.

“Fine,” Hajime says. “Shut up and listen, then.”

⸶⸷

Month fifteen

⸸

_They’re sixteen. Hajime finds Asahi by the stream behind Crow House, curled against a tree trunk and crying his heart out. Worried and uncertain, he sits next to Asahi and tries to get him to tell him what’s wrong, but Asahi is unusually obstinate. He will not talk. So Hajime leans against his shoulder and sits with him in silence, feeling so, so helpless._

_Asahi still cries, like he isn’t even there._

⸸

This selkie is tall. He has a mop of unruly black hair, and sleepy eyes, and a lazy smile, and his fur skin is so dark brown that it’s almost black.

“So you’re Hajime-san?” he says, bending a little to peer at Hajime’s face.

“I am,” Hajime replies, wary. “And who might you be?”

“I’m Issei,” he says, “Tooru’s friend.”

“I see.” Hajime folds his arms. “Did you come here to see the freak human, too?”

Issei laughs, drawling and pleasant. “I did indeed,” he says, “and I don’t mean to insult you.”

Hajime sighs. “Do you know Asahi?”

“I do not, unfortunately.”

“Then thank you for your time, Issei-san,” Hajime says, bowing slightly. “If you happen to meet him, I would appreciate it if you would tell him that I’m waiting for him.”

“Sure, I’ll remember.” Issei’s look is curious. “You really just want to meet him? You don’t want his skin?”

“Yes, I do, and no, I do not,” he says shortly. “Good night to you, and thank you for your time.”

“Good night to you as well,” Issei replies, and watches him leave with that faint, lazy smile.

⸶⸷

He starts building a house, on the slope of the ridge leading down to the beach. It’s easy enough for Suga to say that the word is being spread, but Asahi could return next year or in the next decade, and Hajime is tired of shivering through the night in crannies between rocks. He’s been lugging lumber to the cove on and off for the past few months, and, armed with Tadashi’s detailed instructions, he starts building.

⸶⸷

Month sixteen

⸸

He goes down the ocean, and he can’t cry. He remembers their arguments, their sorrows, their most hurtful times, and he cannot cry. It’s like he’s suddenly been wrung dry, like his store of tears for Asahi has finally been depleted. He does end up crying the seven tears eventually, but they are tears of frustration, not tears of sorrow, not tears of longing. Even as they fall into the waves he knows that they will not work.

And they don’t. He waits in the water for two hours, and then on the beach for five more, and no one comes. He finishes nearly half the cabin he’s building in the early hours of that morning, hammering nails through rough planks with a vengeance, and kicks rocks down the path all the way home.

⸶⸷

Month seventeen

⸸

_“Hajime, please -”_

_“No. Not tonight, Asahi, okay? I need a little time.”_

_Asahi walks to the door reluctantly, his head bowed and his shoulders curled into himself. “Tomorrow?” he offers, with a weak smile._

_Hajime sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, and manages to smile in return. “Yeah. We can talk about it tomorrow.”_

_“Okay. Hajime, I’m - I’m really sorry for -”_

_“I know. We’ll sort it out. Just let me - let my head cool down before that, yeah? I don’t want us to fight.”_

_“Okay. Um - good night.”_

_“Good night. Sleep well.”_

_Hajime sees Asahi’s expression twist at that, and before he can stop himself, he says, ‘Hey -”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“Don’t - don’t worry about it, okay? We always sort our problems out. We’re fine. We’ll be fine.”_

_Asahi’s smile is genuine, this time. “Yeah. We’ll be fine.”_

⸸

“Suga-san!” Hajime sets the bottle in his hand down, surprised. “I didn’t think I would see you again so soon.”

“We’ll be heading down south soon, and I wanted to say goodbye,” Suga says, smiling as he sits. “There was no call last month, and I was afraid you had given up. Was there something that kept you? Prevented you from coming?”

“No, I came, but - I don't know why, I just couldn’t cry for him last time. I thought back to our worst fights over and over again, and nothing happened. It just made me feel terrible.”

“Oh.” Suga considers him thoughtfully. “You look quite upset about it.”

“Suga-san, I only get the opportunity to talk to him once a month. That’s twelve chances in a year for me to either meet him or ensure that word is spread, and that’s very slow, especially if he’s on the other side of the goddamn world. I can’t afford to waste any chances I get, especially not for stupid reasons like not being able to cry.”

“I see . . . if I remember right, didn’t you tell me last time that you cry about him when you least expect to? Does that still happen?”

“It does, but not anything like as often as it used to.”

“Then how about this? Keep a little bottle on a string around your neck, and when that happens, collect the tears. Then, when you come here, you can just use those! You don’t have to worry about not being able to cry once you get here.”

Hajime blinks at him. “Would . . . would that work? It doesn’t seem . . .”

“Well, I can’t be sure, but the call of the seven tears works because the one crying has a searching heart. That kind of longing is a quite powerful kind of magic, so I don’t think it makes a difference _when_ the tears are shed. What matters is what’s in your heart when you shed them, and your heart is always searching, isn’t it, Hajime-san?”

“That’s an understatement,” Hajime half-laughs. “All right then, I’ll try it. Thank you for the suggestion.”

“My pleasure,” Suga grins.

“When will I see you again?”

“Next summer, eight months from now.”

“I wish you a pleasant winter, then.”

“Thank you. Um, Hajime-san, I’m sorry if I’m being rude, but . . . you, uh . . .”

“Yes?”

“You smell a little - a little strong, um . . .”

Hajime is confused for a moment, and then realises what he’s saying. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he laughs, picking up the bottle. “I brought some sake with me this time, to keep me awake. I hate waking up with sand in my mouth.”

“Sake?” Suga asks, taking the bottle from him. He sniffs at the mouth of it, and wrinkles his nose. “You drink this just to keep awake?”

“It doesn’t taste very good, no, but the effects are worth it. I’m assuming you don’t have breweries under the sea?”

“What’s a brewery?”

Within half an hour, Hajime is leaning heavily on Suga’s shoulder, and they’ve discovered that though Suga is no lightweight, half the bottle is enough to get him fairly tipsy. He enjoys the experience a fair bit, and listens to Hajime wax poetic about Asahi for an hour without the least complaint, petting his head soothingly when he sniffles as he describes their fight for the fifth time. Suga is a little unsteady on his legs when he gets up to leave, and Hajime raises the empty bottle at his receding figure.

“Thank you!” he shouts, and Suga smiles and waves before melting into the ocean.

⸶⸷

Month eighteen

⸸

_They’re nineteen, at the Tanabata festival, sitting side by side on the hillside and biting into piping hot takoyaki. Daichi has Hitoka on his shoulders, and Ryuu and Tadashi are laughing as she clutches at the shoulders of his bright yukata, terrified of falling, even though a grinning Keishin has a steady hand on her back._

_“Hajime.”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“I think I fell in love with you here, years ago.”_

_Hajime turns to look at him, his mouth falling open, and Asahi is already smiling back, the stars reflected in his eyes._

_“Yes,” he says musingly, like Hajime has just confirmed it for him, and leans forward to kiss him gently on the cheek. “I definitely fell in love with you here.”_

⸸

“I’m Taichi,” the selkie says. He’s tall, his fur a deep ginger that matches his hair, and there’s sympathy in his hooded eyes. “I know what you are going to ask, Hajime-san, and the answer is unfortunately no. I do not know him, and I have not met him.”

“If you happen to see him -”

“I will definitely tell him that I met you, and that you are waiting for him.”

“Thank you, Taichi-san.”

“I hope he comes.” Taichi says as he turns to leave, and the last Hajime sees of him is his quiet smile.

⸶⸷

Month ninteen

⸸

_“Hajime. Hajime, wake up.”_

_“Don’ wanna,” Hajime grumbles, rolling over and pulling the sheets tighter around him._

_“Hajime, we’re going to be late, and if you don’t get up now ojiisan will know you slept here!”_

_That makes him sit up straight. “Oh, shit, is it already that late?”_

_“You have fifteen minutes,” Asahi grins, and shoves his clothes into his chest. “We can’t be caught the very first time, can we? Quickly now!”_

⸸

“May I know your name?”

“My name is Kei.” The selkie’s hair is the lightest he’s seen, apart from Suga’s. It looks like spun gold, as do his eyes. He’s by far the tallest selkie Hajime has seen so far, and his skin is like porcelain. “And yours is Hajime.”

“That it is. How do you know?”

“You met my brother, Akiteru.”

“You’re his younger brother? It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“And you.” Kei inclines his head politely. “I’m afraid I have only curiosity as my excuse for coming, Hajime-san.”

“You wouldn’t be the first,” Hajime sighs, and gives him a small smile. “Has your curiosity been satisfied, then?”

“Are you truly doing this every month just to meet one selkie? Who left you more than a year ago?”

“I am indeed.”

“And you don’t want his skin?”

“I never want to touch his skin in my life. It is his, and his alone.”

“Huh.” Kei gives him a considering look, and his faint smile makes his eyes seem to glow. “I see.Thank you, Hajime-san. I, like my brother, and many of my kind, hope he returns to you soon.”

⸶⸷

Month twenty

⸸

_They’re twenty one. Hajime’s mother is fussing over Asahi like she never fusses over Hajime, coaxing him to eat more and telling him that he needs to keep up his strength. Asahi looks sheepish, as he always does under her kind scolding, and eats everything she places before him without a word of complaint. Hajime watches them, and grins to himself at the pleasure he derives from from thinking of Asahi living in this house, growing old in this house with them._

_With him._

⸸

This selkie could be Tobio and Kiyoko’s cousin. He has Kiyoko’s skin, and Tobio’s eyes, and his hair is as dark as both of theirs, curly and a little ruffled. His eyes are sharp under lazy eyelids and angled eyebrows.

“My name is Keiji,” he says, quiet and polite. “I am aware that Kei visited you last time, and I apologise, Hajime-san, but I too can plead only curiosity. I am a visitor from the north seas, and I happened to meet Tooru there. When the others living here confirmed the story upon my arrival, I felt quite compelled to come and see you myself. I do apologise.”

“It’s fine, Keiji-san. If you’re willing to ask around about Asahi’s whereabouts when you return to your home, I have no complaints at all.” Hajime can’t help giving him a curious look. “You’re not much like Tooru.”

“I should hope not,” Keiji says, pursing his lips a little. “And yes, I am entirely willing to make queries about Asahi-san when I go back.”

“Then you can ask me whatever you want.”

Keiji clears his throat. “It is only one question that I have - how did you feel, upon realising what Asahi-san truly was?”

“I . . . well, I wasn’t particularly surprised. He’d always had a sort of otherworldly air about him, you know? And it made sense.”

“But it did not - repel you? Horrify you?”

“Not at all. It made no difference to who he was, and how he felt towards me, so I didn’t care.” Hajime raises an eyebrow. “I feel like you have someone in mind with regard to this question, Keiji-san.”

Keiji smiles a little, faint pink blooming in his cheeks. “I visit a village near my pod’s summer grounds quite often, and I have grown to care quite closely for some of the people there. They think I am a trader who must leave periodically, which has suited us all so far, but I cannot help but wonder if it would not be better to tell them what I am without such deceit.”

“I’d say it depends on them. If they are as honest as you, and they care for you as you do for them, I don’t think it should hurt your relationship with them. They’ll probably be surprised, and they might need some time to understand the implications of you being what you are. But if you love them, and they love you, I don't see the problem.”

Keiji looks to be deep in thought for a moment or two, and then he smiles, full and broad and bright.

“Thank you, Hajime-san,” he says. “Rest assured that I will mention you to every single one of my kin I meet, henceforth. And if Asahi does not return to you before the year is out, I will make it my mission to bring him to you myself.”

“You don’t have to go that far,” Hajime laughs, surprised and a little touched. “I didn’t say anything that valuable.”

“It was to me,” Keiji says, turning to leave with a chuckle. “And besides, I don’t think Asahi-san should be allowed to let an affection like yours go to waste!”

⸶⸷

Month twenty one

⸸

Hajime is leaning on his elbows, slouched over the honey wood of the inn's table, his fourth beer in his hand. It’s been a long day, an even longer week, and it’s a half moon night tonight. At the very least he’ll have a warm place to sleep, for the cabin is ready, but just the thought of trudging down to the cove to be faced with disappointment yet again leaves him exhausted. Every time, rising hope is nipped in the bud by the appearance of another curious selkie - but he can’t not go.

Daichi sets down his mug, giving him a look over the rim. "Going down to the ocean again tonight?"

Hajime nods, not willing to bother with words. Daichi sighs, leaning back in his chair. "How long are you going to keep this up, Haji?"

"Until he comes back."

"It's been -"

"I know."

"You still -"

"You know I will."

Daichi sighs again and gets up to leave, and when he passes behind Hajime's chair his hand in his hair is warm and rough. "I hope tonight will be the night, then. Come by at daybreak, you can eat with us before you go to the forge."

Hajime grasps his wrist briefly. "Thank you," he says, gruffly, and knows Daichi hears everything he can't say in those two words. _Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. Thank you for keeping me together._

"Take care of yourself, Haji," Daichi says quietly, ruffling Hajime's hair one last time. When he pushes the door open to leave, Hajime can hear the crash of the waves in the distance, taunting him.

He uses the bottle he wears around his neck, this time, and it works. The selkie appears in a bare hour. His dark hair is a little long, grown until the nape of his neck, and parted down the middle, His eyes are dark brown, and his cheeks are full. He’s young and tall, like Tobio. His fur is a pale grey.

“You’re the one waiting for Asahi-san?” he says. “You’re Hajime?”

The way he says Hajime’s name sounds decidedly similar to the Asahi used to say it. Hope flares painfully in Hajime’s chest.

“I am,” he says. “You know him?”

“I met him twice.”

“Your name?”

“Akira.”

“Did you meet him near here? Or -”

“No, these are not my pod’s grounds. We would not usually even visit this sea, but I felt that I should come see you.” Those round eyes survey Hajime thoughtfully. “The first time I met him was a year and a half ago. He was on his way to visit his sister, if I remember right. The second time, he was swimming up north, to visit Keiji’s pod, for his brother’s mate was from there. He mentioned you only the second time.”

“What did he say? Akira-san, please -”

“Someone else, someone he’s close to, told him about you, and I happened to hear. He told them quite clearly that he was doing everything possible to ensure that he never had contact with you again. He’s determined to forget you, in short.”

Hajime’s heart drops like a stone, despair settling in the pit of his stomach like lead. It’s a good few moments before he’s able to clear his throat enough to speak.

“You came here to tell me this?”

“I did.” Akira tugs his skin closer around his neck. “Asahi-san is a good person, a kind person. He has not told me anything about what occurred between you, but it seems to me that it would be best for both of you if you stopped this.” He turns away, and looks back over his shoulder one last time as the fur rises up over his head, swallowing his features. “Don’t make his life harder, Hajime-san.”

⸶⸷

Month twenty two

⸸

_Asahi lets Hajime pull him out into the rain, and stands still with his face tilted to the clouds for a long moment, eyes closed. Lightning flashes, illuminating the water streaming down his face and beginning to soak into his green yukata. Gleaming drops of rain catch in his eyelashes and his lips, and the tip of his tongue darts out once to drink them. His hair is beginning to stick to his skin, and he brushes it back with one strong hand as he opens his eyes, and a faint, knowing smile begins to curve his mouth, like the thunder has just told him all its secrets. Like it’s just told him that the storm belongs to him._

_He looks more regal than Hajime has ever seen him, like a thunder god that’s deigned to descend to earth and see what his handiwork looks like to the mortals below. Hajime suddenly has two furiously warring impulses; one to kiss him like he’s never kissed him before, the other to remain a respectful distance away and drink in the sight of him, and both are due to the fact that he looks so impossibly, untouchably beautiful._

_Then he blinks, and the moment passes. Asahi looks at him, smiling and a little quizzical. Hajime shakes his head, and holds out a hand, and grins._

_“Dance with me!”_

⸸

“Nobuyuki-san!” Hajime scrambles to his feet from where he's sitting on the sand.

“Hajime-san.” Nobuyuki bows slightly. “It’s good to see you again, after so long, I wasn’t quite sure that you would remember me.”

Hajime bows in return. “Of course I remember you. It’s good to see you too, but what brings you back here? I didn’t expect to see you again.”

“I have some news I thought you might be pleased to know. Selkies are terrible gossips, and given the rather unique situation you’ve placed Asahi in, quite a few of us now know his name and care about his whereabouts.” Nobuyuki smiles, and his eyes dance. “It’s quite the romance, and we tend to be a sentimental people. I heard - from a friend of a friend of a friend - that he is on his way back to these seas.”

“Oh -” Hajime takes a step forward without realising what he’s doing. “Nobuyuki-san, are you certain that - that he -”

“As certain as I can be.” Nobuyuki’s gaze turns concerned. “You don’t look happy, Hajime-san, you look . . . apprehensive. Is something wrong?”

“No, I - the last selkie, he told me that Asahi was - was doing his best to forget me, that he wanted nothing to do with me. I guess if he’s coming back then he isn’t resolved on that anymore, but . . .” He shrugs helplessly. “Well, I have to face him either way, right? Even if he’s angry at me. It’s - it’s fine.”

Nobuyuki comes a little closer, the waves lapping at his hips, and cups Hajime’s cheeks in warm palms. Hajime is too surprised to either step away, or ask him what he’s doing.

“He might be angry,” Nokuyuki says, gazing down at him with those kind eyes. “And he might not. But, from what I’ve heard of him, he will at the very least listen to you. He will give you that chance. And I’m sure you will use that chance as well as you possibly can. You’ve had so much time to think about what to say and how to say it, I’m certain that you will not let him leave without having told him what you need to. It will work out, I know it.”

He bends a little, and places a soft kiss on Hajime’s forehead. Hajime realises, to his horror, that he’s near tears. For Daichi to say something like this is one thing, but for this selkie, who’s only met him briefly once before, to care so much, to be so kind . . .

“Thank you,” he manages to say. “That - that means more to me than I can say, Nobuyuki-san. Thank you.”

Nobuyuki pats his cheek once, smiling, and steps back. “Keep your spirits high,” he says, as he turns to leave. “I wish you the best of luck, Hajime-san, and I’m sure that he will return to you soon.”

⸶⸷

Month twenty three

⸸

Tooru makes a face at the tiny glass bottle, dropping it so it bounces against Hajime’s chest. “That’s what you used?”

“Yep,” Hajime says, without opening his eyes. He’s lying on the veranda of the cabin he’s built with his hands under his head, and Tooru is sitting next to him.

“It takes all the fun out of it if you do that,” Tooru says. “Also it’s strange seeing you look so normal, I’m used to your eyes being all red and your - ouch, all right, don’t pinch me!” His voice comes closer as he lies down next to Hajime. “Is it hard to cry or something?”

“A little.” Hajime sighs, and opens his eyes to look at the sky. It’s close to the tail end of an unusually long winter, and tonight is the first night that the skies have been clear in weeks. “This is just . . . it’s so tiring, you know? Coming down here every month, forcing myself to remember things that it would be easier to bury, and hoping, and being let down. Every month. And it feels like a betrayal to admit it, but - I don’t miss him as desperately as I used to.”

“Then stop this,” Tooru says softly, and Hajime’s never heard his voice so gentle. “Why punish yourself like this? Stay in the village, and move on with your life.”

“I can’t do that, Tooru.”

“Why?”

“Because . . .” A tear starts in the corner of Hajime’s eyes as the answer rises to his tongue, and he smiles slightly as he brushes it away. “Because I still miss him terribly. It might have faded, but that’s going to happen when all you have left of a person is your memories of them. My love may have faded, too, but it is still very much there, and I know it will never disappear. And this isn’t about what I’ll get out of it, it’s not about my own satisfaction or my own happiness. It’s a responsibility. I owe it to him to explain. And also I owe it to myself to try as much as I can, for as long as I can.”

“I see. Then for your sake, I hope he returns soon. You look a little thinner every time I see you.”

“I’m not wasting away, Tooru, I’m not that stupid.”

“That doesn’t mean you aren’t getting thinner.” Hajime can hear his smile. “Hey, if you ever need someone to hold, you know, for a couple of nights, I’ll always be a willing volunteer.”

Hajime only snorts a laugh, turning to look at him. “Am I that alluring, idiot?”

“You are,” Tooru says, and he’s still smiling, but there’s no trace of it in his eyes. “I’m not saying it as a joke, Hajime, or to rile you up. You are.”

Hajime is quiet for a second, realising how serious Tooru is, and realising that it demands a serious answer.

“Maybe in a different life,” he finally says, as quietly as Tooru. “You’re beautiful, and cheeky, and smart as a whip, and I enjoy being around you - for the most part, at least.” Tooru snorts, and he smiles. “But in this life, I love him, and I cannot imagine ever not being in love with him.”

“And so you will continue to wait,” Tooru sighs, turning to look at the sky. “And you will continue to cry for him. Even though you look like you have as much emotion as a stone cliff.”

“I’m sorry,” Hajime says, ignoring the last part.

“You needn’t be. Truly.” He grins. “I’m sure I will forget you much faster than you will forget him.”

Hajime bursts out laughing, and Tooru laughs with him, and they watch the stars turn until they both fall asleep.


	8. reunion, sunlight, promise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we finally have the art!!! Suze was my partner for this fic, and aaaaaaaaa what she's done looks absolutely magical. You can find it [here](https://zuavia.tumblr.com/post/615035331123740672/my-piece-for-hqrarepairbang-i-got-to-draw-a) on Tumblr and [here](https://twitter.com/zuavia/status/1248681413186064384?s=21) on Twitter!!

Hajime tips the last drop out of the bottle, and sighs. He’s still three tears short.

It’s a cold night. Scurrying clouds filter the weak light of the half moon, making the tops of the gentle waves gleam for brief moments before leaving them in darkness once more. Beyond the mouth of the cove, white foam is thrown up as the sea crashes thunderously against the guardian rocks. The icy water has drenched the bottom of Hajime’s hakama, and is slowly creeping upwards.

He kneels in the water, wincing as the chill bites into his skin, but kneeling nonetheless. He has a change of clothes and lanterns and sake and a little food in the cabin he’s built, and he could easily do the ritual and then go wait on the veranda there, out of the wind. But it’s a clear night, a pretty night, and he might as well wait in the water for some time before going back to the warmth and struggling not to fall asleep.

 _I need to be sure to fill the bottle this month,_ he thinks, tapping a fingernail against the glass. _Can’t keep forgetting like this . . ._

 _Growing old already, Hajime?_ Asahi’s faint voice chuckles in the back of his mind, and he snorts softly.

“You’re my age, dumbass,” he mutters out loud, because there’s no one to hear him, anyway. “And unless selkies have some kind of extended lifespan as well as insane body heat and the magical ability to turn into a seal, you’re growing old too. Are you finally going to turn up only when we’re both seventy?”

_If you keep doing this, you’ll definitely die of pneumonia before forty five, forget about seventy._

They’re Daichi’s words, this time. Hajime sighs, looking down at his own reflection in the gently shifting water. There’s a little more white at his temples now than before the winter, and even he can see the new lines at the corner of his eyes.

“Only Daichi says it, but I know that everyone wants me to stop this,” he murmurs. “Even Yacchan and Tadashi, they still want you back, but they worry more about what it’s doing to me. It doesn’t matter that I’d be worrying and - and mourning you, aching for you, even if I stayed behind like they want me to. I told them that, but they still don’t want me to keep coming here. Go every other month instead, Daichi told me.” He watches his mouth twist a little bitterly. “The whole ocean knows your name, now, and you still aren’t here. So showing up half as often would get you here faster, huh? Gods, Asahi . . .”

The tears come with the words, and fall as they leave his mouth. “What have you done to me,” he whispers, and closes his eyes tight to squeeze the tears out. “What have you done to me, Asa? What did you to do me that I still care so fucking much?”

The third tear falls into the sea. He makes no move to wipe the others away as it briefly shatters his reflection, knowing that the wind will dry them on his cheeks.

_There. Seven. Please let it not be Tooru again, this time . . ._

The wind picks up, dies down, and picks up again, whistling past Hajime and curling into his clothes. A shiver ripples up his back, and he wonders whether he should go back to the cabin and wait after all as he lifts his head to look at the moon.

And he freezes, his heart hammering in his chest so hard he can feel it in his ears.

There’s a selkie standing at the entrance of the cove already, though the seven tears were completed a bare minute ago. He’s tall, his fur skin making his broad figure look even bigger, and all the feeling leaves Hajime’s legs as the selkie begins to walk towards him, as the moon peeps out of the clouds and throws a faint ray of pale light on his face.

He’s finally here.

Relief sings through every vein in Hajime’s body, the relief parched land must feel when finally kissed by rain, the relief a soldier’s family must embrace them with when they finally come home from war. Sweet, sweet relief, like a thorn he hadn’t even realised was piercing his chest is suddenly gone, letting him breathe freely for the first time in years. There’s jarring anxiety in the middle of it, sprouting quick as a weed and binding like iron around his ribs, because Asahi has finally, finally come back, this is his one and only chance to explain himself, to gain Asahi’s forgiveness, and he cannot afford to waste it; but it’s not the anxiety that’s making his limp hands tremble underwater as Asahi comes to stand in front of him, as he drinks in the sight of his face for the first time in two long, long years.

All the selkies had been a little unearthly, a little different, a little _other_. They had clearly not been human, even a blind person would have been able to tell from their very way of speaking. But Asahi . . . Asahi looks incredible, unbelievable. He stands in front of Hajime, his long hair wet and matted from the seawater, his dark eyes unreadable as he looks down at him, and all Hajime can think is how appropriate it is that he’s kneeling, because everyone should kneel in a presence like this. Asahi is taller than before, bigger than before, like he’s finally filled out his body like he was always meant to. His thick chestnut fur skin is draped across his shoulders with more easy elegance than any yukata or kosode that Hajime has ever seen him wear, no matter how finely made it was. He stands with the moonlight sliding tenderly across his skin, with small waves licking affectionately at his hips, so utterly in his element that Hajime finally, finally understands how lucky he was to have ever been able to touch him, to hold him - this half-god who has been returned to his kingdom, who had deigned to love him. His domain was never the thunder, never the rain. It was the darkest depths of the ocean, it was the lightest foam on the tops of the tallest waves, it was brine and saltwater and deep ocean blue, and it is only now that he is returned to it that Hajime can see how much the loss of it had diminished him; it is only now that he stands straight and tall that he realises how low the call of the ocean had bent his back with pain.

“You came,” Hajime manages to whisper.

“I did,” Asahi replies, and had his voice always been that deep, that rich? “You’ve made me famous, Hajime. I had selkies off the coasts of the most remote Pacific islands asking me if I’d gone back to see you yet, once they knew my name.”

“I - “ Hajime doesn’t know how to reply to this, doesn’t know what this regal creature expects of him. “I’m sorry if I - if I made things difficult - if I caused you trouble -”

He can hardly hear his own unsteady voice over the crash of the waves, but Asahi seems to hear him just fine. “An explanation would be appreciated,” he says, his voice ringing out strong.

“An explanation,” Hajime breathes, looking down at the water, for he cannot bear to meet those eyes. His hands curl into shaking fists. “Yes, I - I need to -”

A jolt travels through him like lightning as warm fingertips slide under his chin. “You,” Asahi says, tilting his face up inexorably, “you, of all people, must never look down so. You never once failed to face the world head on, not in the ten years I knew you. Is that no longer true?”

Hajime, caught by his gaze, is helpless to stop the tears starting in his eyes. “I - I can’t -” he stammers. “I - don’t know -”

“Face me, Hajime, as I really am. As this -” He gestures to his cloak with one hand. “- for the first time.”

He is stern and unyielding, his fingertips burning against Hajime’s skin. Hajime’s eyes flutter shut, and the tears spill over. He raises a cold, wet hand to Asahi’s wrist and turns slowly, hesitantly, to nestle his cheek and nose into his broad palm. He tastes salt, and cannot tell if it is from his own tears or from Asahi’s skin.

There’s a quiet sigh, almost lost in the wind, and Asahi’s thumb strokes gently over his cheek once. Hajime looks up at him, and he’s smiling faintly, some flicker of the old, warm flame of kindness he used to know so well in the depths of his eyes. The bands around Hajime’s chest loosen just a little, and he manages to give him a semblance of a smile in return as he says, “All I wanted to do, all this time, was - was explain. Will you give me an hour of your time?”

Asahi inclines his head slightly, and Hajime follows him out of the water. The silence between them is not broken until they reach the little cabin.

“You built this?” Asahi asks, ducking into the house and dusting the sand off his feet in the genkan.

“Ah -” Hajime turns from where he’s lighting the lanterns. “I did. Tadashi taught me what I needed to know. I thought - well, I didn’t know how long I might have to keep coming here, so I thought I might as well . . .”

Asahi says nothing in reply. He watches Hajime pull out the threadbare futon he sleeps on and dust it off, and sits with quiet assurance when it is set down. Hajime hastily strips off his wet hakama and slips on a yukata before kneeling across from him, mirroring his posture - back straight, gazing directly at him.

Hajime takes a moment to gather his thoughts, recalling everything he’s told himself for so long, everything he promised himself he wouldn’t fail to tell Asahi. Asahi, who is sitting right across from him, watching him like a stranger.

“None of this was to get you back,” he says abruptly. “None of this was to convince you of anything, to prove that I - I still want you, or that you should come back. All I wanted was to speak to you once more. To explain, and to apologize.”

Asahi still says nothing. Hajime takes a deep, deep breath, and wills himself to keep his composure.

“I loved you like no one else. Like no one else before, and I don’t think I could ever love anyone again the way I loved you, and you - you know that, I think. And . . . and that wasn’t enough, that night. Just my love was not enough. I didn’t have understanding, I didn’t have empathy, I didn’t - didn’t have any compassion for what you were going through. I let my hurt take over, and I didn’t try to listen to what you were saying. I realised, later, what I ended up doing. I just - assumed that a life with me, with us, was as important or more important than the one you’d lost. Like all that mattered to me was the part of you that loved me. I didn’t realise - I didn’t even think about your pain, your sorrow, the fear you’d felt for so long, everything stopped you from telling me what you were. If you had, I -” He pauses, and has to take a moment before he can speak again. “I want to say I would have accepted it without a second’s hesitation, that I would have kept your secret, been your strength, that I would have been everything you needed. But I would have also said that giving you back your skin would have been a moment of happiness for both of us, instead of - of something that still kills me to remember. So much of the blame for that is mine. I was a fool, and I can’t apologise enough for the way things went that night. I was too blinded by my own pain to realise how much worse yours must have been.

“I chased you, you know? I hadn’t sat there for a bare minute before I realised that you were actually leaving. I chased you to the water and saw you go under the waves. I sat there, on that beach, and cried for you to come back for so long, I could barely speak when I got back to the village. And every single second of the past two years, every moment I missed you, was made so much worse by knowing that if I’d just listened better, if I’d just been more patient, if I’d just tried harder to understand, we wouldn’t have had to part like that. I’m so, so sorry, Asahi, for everything.” He bends at the waist to place his forehead on the floor, waiting for the verdict. “And all I wanted was to tell you that.’

There’s a beat of silence before Asahi speaks. “So you understand,” he says quietly. “You understand what you did.”

“I do. I’m - I’m so sorry.”

“I will not apologize for leaving, Hajime.”

Hajime raises his head, his throat working as he tries not to break. “I wouldn’t ask you to. I couldn’t.”

Asahi reaches for his hand, squeezing it gently. “But I will apologize for how I left. I could have stayed. I could have tried harder to - to help you understand, to tell you better what I felt, and I could have tried harder to hear what you were saying, too. I know you would have understood me if I’d just waited, if I’d just kept my temper, and it was not fully fair of me to expect it of you in that moment when I’d never once mentioned my previous life to you before. I -” He swallows, his calm poise faltering for the first time, and Hajime grips his hand tighter. “I missed you. So much. I tried so hard not to, I tried so hard to leave you behind, but I never could. If - if I’d come back sooner -”

“You should have,” Hajime whispers, finally giving in to the storm trapped in his chest, and tears begin to stream down his face. “You should have come back - Asahi -”

His voice cracks, and Asahi holds out his arms, and he’s in them in a moment, burying his face in Asahi’s neck as his shoulders begin to shake.

“To apologize is all you wanted?” Asahi murmurs in his ear, one hand cradling the back of his head gently, and, gods, Hajime wants nothing more than to sink into him and forget everything, everything else. “That’s why you spent so long crying into the ocean?”

“No, I -” Hajime sobs, clutching him harder. He hasn’t cried like this in two years. “Even if you hated me, even if you refused to listen, even if you _hit_ me, I thought if I could only - if I could just see you - one last time, just one more time -”

“Hajime,” Asahi breathes into his hair. “Oh -” His arms are tight around Hajime, now, holding him together as he falls apart. “You idiot,” he chides, and Hajime can hear the waver in his voice. “How long would you have done that? How many years, how many times, and for me? For a selkie?”

“A thousand years,” Hajime sniffles, pulling back to look at him. “A thousand years, a thousand times, and _only_ for you.”

“You’re a fool to love me still, sweetheart,” Asahi says, tears beginning to pool in the corners of his eyes. Hajime shakes his head, and leans forward to rest his forehead against Asahi’s.

“It’s the only truly good thing I’ve done,” he breathes, “loving you.”

“Untrue,” Asahi chuckles wetly, “and you’re still a fool.”

“But you’re here, aren’t you?”

“If I wasn’t? If I’d found the strength to stay away?”

Hajime curls his fingers tighter into Asahi’s hair. “But you didn’t,” he whispers. “You’re here. You came back to me.”

He doesn’t know who moves first, but Asahi lets him tilt his chin upwards with weak fingertips, and his mouth opens under Hajime’s like a flower, sweet and welcoming. Hajime kisses him like he’s starving, like he’d kissed him for the first time, all clumsiness and eager desperation, because he doesn’t know if this will be the last - if all he’ll have of Asahi to carry with him, after tonight, is the salt on his lips and the strength of his arms.

Asahi pulls back first, cupping his face in his hands, stroking his cheeks, running a soft hand through his hair. Hajime closes his eyes, trying to memorize this touch he hasn’t felt in so long.

“You look older,” he murmurs. “And thinner. Have you been eating well? Sleeping well?”

Hajime chuckles a little, rubbing a hand across his eyes to try and stop the tears. “Daichi used to have to - to make sure I ate at least a half decent meal every day, at the -the beginning, but I eat fine now. Sleep - well, I get enough.”

Asahi’s fingers trace a gentle path under one of his eyes. “You liar,” he smiles, and there’s something heartbroken in it. “Truly, you should have forgotten me.”

“Did you?” Hajime asks. “Could you have?”

Asahi’s gaze drops, and there’s silence as his fingers trace across Hajime’s cheek to press lightly against his mouth. “I could not,” he says quietly, “and I hated myself for it, but . . . in this world, I don’t know if I could ever stop loving you.”

Happiness flutters in Hajime’s chest, so much happiness that he has to close his eyes tight against a fresh wave of tears. He kisses Asahi’s fingers, one by one, and murmurs, “Will you leave?” into his palm.

“I . . . yes. I have to. But I can come back every half moon night, if that’s what you - if you still -”

“That’s more than enough,” Hajime says. “That’s more than I could ask of you.”

Asahi pulls his face down to kiss his forehead, long and reassuring. “Then I will come. And -” he hesitates as Hajime turns to press a kiss to his wrist. “I want to see everyone else too, if they aren’t angry with me, if they haven't forgotten me. Daichi, Hitoka, Ukai-jiisan, Keishin, Tadashi, Ryuu, Saeko-san -”

“They’ll be overjoyed,” Hajime laughs. “Gods, they won’t leave you to me for a second. There’s a lot you missed, you know? My mother’s practically given the inn to Daichi and Ryuu, Keishin was almost eclipsed as the best fisher in the village and nearly had to fight for his honour, Tadashi and Hitoka are expecting a child -”

“What?!” Asahi yelps, jerking upright so fast he nearly dislodges Hajime from his lap. “They -”

“They got married a year ago.”

“Oh,” Asahi breathes, his eyes glowing with delight. “Oh, I have to see them, congratulate them, I can’t believe she’s going to have a child -”

Hajime silences him with a kiss. “Not next time,” he says, “you can see them the month after next. Next month, I want you to myself.”

Asahi smiles, slow and wide and warm. “Agreed,” he says, kissing Hajime’s nose. “Next time, I’m all yours.”

He tries to ask further about everyone at Crow House and in the village, but Hajime refuses to answer as he settles within the circle of his arm, nestled against his chest in blissfully familiar warmth.

“They can wait,” he says. “Tell me about your family, Asa.”

“About my -” Asahi looks down at him in surprise that swiftly melts into tender affection. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” Hajime smiles ruefully. “Everything you couldn’t tell me before - if you’re willing.”

“I’d love to,” Asahi says, kissing his temple, and begins to speak. Hajime learns that Suga had told him the truth - his brother had taken a mate from the north, and his sister does lead her own pod, having claimed a major portion of the coveted Indian ocean as their winter grounds and the southernmost tip of Africa as their summer grounds. Her pod is large enough that she’s a member of one of the seven councils that govern the seven sections of the oceans -

“The what?”

“The council. It’s a very prestigious position, and she’s one of the youngest to have ever received the honour.”

“What do they govern, though? Who’s eating all the best fish, or -”

Asahi pinches his stomach none too lightly, and Hajime yelps an apology. “Brat,” Asahi says, eyes alight with amusement. “Give us a little more credit. They lay down the law for us, and govern their own pods so we don’t run into trouble.”

“What kind of law?”

“Determining safe places to shift if we must go on land, determining safe nesting grounds, things like that. They send periodic volunteers to land so we know things like how human fishing patterns are likely to change, or what is currently being said about us, or what new improvements are likely to be made to your vessels that might require us to change our travel routes or feeding grounds. I don’t know too much about it, to be frank, but this is the gist of what she explained to me.”

“Sounds like something Ukai-jiisan would be interested in hearing more about. Does she like it, this important position?”

“She does, yes. She’s not much like me,” he smiles. “She’s closer to Daichi, I think. And she undertakes her responsibility with pride.”

“Your parents must be proud.”

“They are, very much so.”

“Where did you find them, finally?”

He’d found them off the Antarctic coast in the other hemisphere, and had had a long journey and the help of more people than he could count to finally run them to earth. Hajime, listening to the account of his travels and his descriptions of the various people he spoke to, can’t help thinking that he’s not entirely to blame for Asahi’s unlooked for fame, for he seems to have asked every single selkie he met for assistance. He listens, and realises just how very small his life is compared to Asahi’s. He hasn’t stepped out of his village in years, whereas there isn’t a single sea in the world Asahi hasn’t visited. He talks of plants and animals and languages that Hajime will never know, of sights he will never see, of how it felt to ride the cold currents again and how he’d forgotten how whalesong sounds, and Hajime has to laugh.

Asahi stops short in the middle of an animated description of his escape from a severely irritated orca. “What is it?”

“Nothing, just - I really never knew you, did I?”

Asahi’s mouth purses in the way he has when he’s unhappy. “That’s not true, Hajime.”  
  
“It is, though. There’s so much about you I never knew, and it’s so much a part of who you are, so how can I say I knew you at all?”

“I’m still me, whether I’m on land or -”

“That’s not true, Asa,” Hajime says, without a hint of malice, because it’s a fact. “We both know that’s not true. You told me to face you as you really are, didn’t you? Because I never have before.”

“That’s -” Asahi looks troubled, now. “You couldn’t possibly have done so, it’s not -”

“Oh, I know. I’m not blaming myself, or you. It was just a thought.”

Asahi sits in silence for a minute, absently tracing circles over Hajime’s hip. “I’m not really my - my full self on land, without my cloak,” he says eventually. “But my cloak iss not the core of who I am. You knew me, and you knew me better than anyone else, even if there was a lot you couldn’t know. Don’t doubt that.”

Hajime reaches up to kiss his cheek. “I knew enough of you to be able to love you, but I still knew far too little. Sound about right?”

“Why do you have to say it like that?” Asahi groans quietly.  
  
“Because it’s true. And it’s not something to get upset about, dumbass. I’ll just have to work to know more about you, won’t I? If you’ll let me.” Hajime traces the lines on his free palm, momentarily finding himself unequal to meeting his gaze. “If you’ll grant me that time. I don’t mean to push you to come back every single night for the next few decades, or how many ever years we both live. I know you couldn’t, and - and I don’t know if you’d want to be bound by -”

Asahi’s hand shifts out of the shadow of the chestnut fur to curl rough fingers in between Hajime’s, and Hajime’s mouth parts in shock at the gleam of tarnished metal at the wrist. “You -” He looks up in disbelief, kicking himself for not having noticed earlier. “You kept it!”

“I almost threw it away, once, when I was still angry with you,” Asahi admits. “But I couldn't quite bring myself to do it. I have space for many more pendants on that cord, and I’m going to keep coming back here until it’s full. And when it’s full I’ll wear a new one, and you’d damn well better fill that one too. You are going to know more about me and my family and my people than you ever bargained for, Iwaizumi Hajime, whether you like it or not.”

Hajime realises his grip on Asahi’s hand is probably tight enough to cut off some circulation, and can’t bring himself to care. He can’t quite find his voice, but manages to say, “I didn’t know if you’d still - if you’d trust me enough to - to come back, to tell me about everything I don’t know, when humans and selkies aren’t on the best of terms, anyway, and - especially after I - what I did, what I said -”

“Of course I do,” Asahi says instantly, insistently, deep pain in his eyes. He presses a long, unbearably tender kiss to Hajime’s forehead. “Don’t blame yourself like this, Hajime, please,” he murmurs. “You don’t deserve it in any way.”

“No?” Hajime whispers, his eyes stinging. _My fault_ has been resounding in his head for so long now, he can’t bring himself to believe that Asahi hasn’t been thinking the same all this time.

“No.” Asahi holds his face in his palms, and Hajime can see the conviction in the depths of his gaze. “Don’t cry, sweetheart, you’ve cried far too many times for me already. It is not your fault that I left.”

“It was my fault that -”

“I wasn’t blameless either, remember? And that doesn’t matter, either way. It’s long past, you hear me? I’m here, and I will always, _always_ come back to you. You will never have to wait for me like you did again. I’m here.”

Hajime’s breath trembles in his throat as Asahi kisses his forehead once more. “Promise me,” he whispers, helpless and imploring and hating how desperate he sounds, but unable to stop himself.

“I promise,” Asahi says, steadily. “Nothing short of an army will stop me from coming here to see you every single month, Hajime. I swear.”

He lets Hajime bury his face in his shoulder, stroking through his hair once more. “Okay?” he says softly, and Hajime nods without looking up.

“Finish what you were saying, before, about the orca,” he says, and Asahi chuckles and does so. His low voice drops as gradually as the lanterns dim, and when he’s exhausted as many of his stories as he can think of it’s only a few hours to dawn. It’s Hajime’s turn, then, to talk about the selkies he’d met, the ones that had known Asahi, the ones who had been eager to help and the ones who hadn’t. Asahi hides his laugh badly when he hears about Tooru, and is delighted to hear about Suga and Nobuyuki and Kiyoko. The conversation shifts to the village, and Hajime tells him about how the forge is doing, about Tadashi and Hitoka’s wedding, about how Ukai-jiisan had teared up but refused to admit it, about how Daichi and Ryuu would never have a ceremony but run the Iwaizumi tavern like they’ve been married for years. He falls into exhausted sleep somewhere in the middle of reciting the list of ridiculous baby names he and Daichi had spent a creative hour devising for Hitoka, his head pillowed on Asahi’s chest and tucked into his fur.

Asahi falls asleep soon after, and they both wake in the early afternoon, rested and content. There’s not enough food in the house for the both of them, so Asahi goes to fish, catching enough for three meals in the bare span of a half hour. He’s graceful in the water like Hajime has never seen before, slipping between the jagged rocks littering the water with all the ease of a dancing ribbon before coming ashore to spit fat silver fish without a single mark at Hajime’s feet. As a seal, however, he’s much more clumsy on land than he ever is human. Hajime can’t help laughing as he does his best to shuffle out of the water onto the beach, sending sand scattering everywhere as he drags himself forward. Asahi twitches disgruntled whiskers at him, and then he’s sitting there in his human form, his fur settling around his shoulders.

“Quit laughing and build a fire for those,” he says, his mouth twitching despite himself, and Hajime kisses his cheek with a grin before doing as he’s told. Asahi cleans the fish while he searches for dry wood, and it takes a while for a good fire to build up, but neither of them grudge the time. They eat in comfortable silence when it’s ready, always contriving to remain touching each other somehow; with their feet placed in each other’s laps, with their little fingers linked together, with their shoulders resting against each other.

“When do you have to leave?” Hajime asks. Asahi squints at the sun, measuring the distance it has yet to sink.

“Sunset,” he says absently. “I think we have perhaps half an hour more.”

Hajime tosses the last of his fishbones behind the rock they’re sitting against before settling back against him. “So soon?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Where will you go now?”

“I’ll visit Morisuke and Kiyoko, I think, and stay with them until next month.”

“So you’ll be around this coast.”

“I will.” Asahi smiles against his temple. “Tell Kei-nii he might see me alongside his boat, now and then.”

Hajime snorts. “As long as you don’t cut into his catch . . .”

“I make no guarantees about that,” he laughs. “I’m definitely the better fisher by a long shot.”

“I’m not going to argue,” Hajime sighs, smiling.

Asahi tugs his pelt closer around the both of them as a chill breeze starts up. “I want to bring them to you, some time,” he says, “Suga and Morisuke and Kiyoko, once I get to know them again. They were my family, before, and I’ve known your family all this while, and - I’d like my family to become yours, too. My parents and siblings might be a little harder, given how far apart they live, but they will meet you one day - if that’s something you’d like?”

Hajime presses his mouth to Asahi’s knuckles for a brief moment. “I’d like nothing more,” he says softly, sincerely, feeling like his happiness might overflow at the implications of _I’d like my family to become yours_ and _They will meet you one day_. “I look forward to it.”

Sunset comes all too quickly. Hajime stays close by him until the last possible moment, and lets go of his hand when he steps into the water with reluctance. Asahi holds his chin gently, and kisses him long and sweet.

“A month will pass before you know it,” he says, taking a step back as he lets go.

Hajime nods, but without conviction. “I’ll miss you,” he says, his smile a little twisted despite himself. “Take care of yourself, Asa.”

“I should be the one saying that to you,” Asahi says, mock-sternly. “Let your mother feed you properly, yes?”

“I will, I will.”

“And tell everyone I’ll see them two months from now.”

“Got it.”

“And that I’m sorry, and -”

Hajime strides forward and kisses him bruisingly hard, hard enough that Asahi has to quickly shift his balance to keep them both from falling. “Go,” Hajime says, when they break apart. His heart is aching at having to say goodbye so soon, but Asahi’s promise is a glowing flame in his chest as he grins up at him, finally feeling something like his old self again. “Go, and come back to me, and tell them yourself.”

Asahi’s grin matches his, and he kisses Hajime’s fingertips before stepping back for the last time. “I will. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Hajime says softly, and waves farewell as he disappears under the waves. He huffs a sigh, and puts his hands on his hips, and looks up at the sky as he blinks bittersweet tears of joy from his eyes.

He knows they will be the last tears he’ll shed in a long time to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and they lived happily ever after ^.^  
> hhhhhhhh it was such a pleasure making this fic for them, and i put so much of myself into it. again, feedback is always deeply appreciated. thank you for reading! My Tumblr is [here](https://yaelathewordsmith.tumblr.com/) and my Twitter is [here](https://twitter.com/writer_yaela), hit me up if you'd like to chat or for info about commissions :))) Suze's Tumblr is [here](https://zuavia.tumblr.com/) and her Twitter is [here](https://twitter.com/zuavia)!


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